m 



mW^r 



irii'i 



liillllliiillllll!! 



i ^ 11 llli III 111. 

i Hiilili Hi iiitiOHiiiliniitiitiiiiii 









'•■ ;;fM||»"»'.ii.i 



ilii)tiii(iitiiitiii!:> 



!.i "'..iiJKlf' 



iiiiilj|tiii||i {' 



\\^''-'' > 






i^-umumiiu^m 




Copyright N^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



SOME 
TRUTHS OF HISTORY 



A VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH AGAINST 

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 

AND OTHER MALiONERS 



By THADDEUS K. OGLESBY 



» > > -" ) 



ATLANTA, GA. 

Ths Byrd Printing Company. 

1903 



K. 



r 



THt LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies ReceivetJ 

FEB 6 1903 

fl Copytignl Entry 
CLASS Ct^ XXo. No. 
COPY B, 



J 



Copyright 1903 
By T. K. Oglesby. 



: ; 

• •!•••• •••• 



Some Press Comments 



*'Mr. Oglesby has done the South a great service. He has 
not only undermined a slander, but has brought to the sur- 
face facts of which 999 persons out of every 1,000 are igno- 
rant or forgetful. Any man or woman who loves the South 
can well afford to pay the price charged per copy.'' — The 
Bichmond (Va.) Dispatch. 

"Mr. Oglesby's vindication is ample. He has grouped to- 
gether the remarkable deeds of Southern men in a way that 
IS truly admirable. We could wish that a copy were in the 
hands of every Southern family and that every boy in the 
Southland would read it and find within its pages an incent- 
ive to emulate the example of some native of the South who 
has contributed to the happiness or advancement of mankind.'' 
— The Neivs and Observer (Ealeigh, N. C.) 

*'We cannot afford to permit sectional narrowness and mal- 
ice to misrepresent the South to coming generations, which 
may be led astray by the persistent repetition of such auda- 
cious falsehoods as that in the Britannica. Fortunately this 
encyclopediac slander of the South has already been answered 
m a pamphlet by Mr. T. K. Oglesby, which should be in the 
library of every Southern famHy, and should be read by 
every Southern man and woman."— TAe Baltimorean (Balti- 
more, Md.) 

"The Southern people are deeply indebted to Mr. T. K. 
Oglesby for a complete and masterly vindication of the South 
against the aspersions of the Encyclopedia Britannica— asper- 
sions that are either the outcome of inexcusable ignorance or 
of inexplicable malice, or of both combined. Mr. Oglesby 's 
book should be in the hands of every Southern man espec- 
ially, and of every other man who values the truth of his- 
tory." — The Index-Appeal (Petersburg, Va.) 

^'The article on American literature in the British Ency- 
clopedia is just now undergoing a severe handling from the 
Southern newspapers. There is one paragraph in particular 



4 Some Truths of History. 

•which has aroused the ire of the Southerners, and it reads 
as follows: ******** 

**Mr. T. K. Oglesby, a loyal Southerner, has prepared a 
list to show the untruthfulness of the Encyclopedia article. 
The sweeping claim for New England made in the article and 
the sweeping arraignment of the South are absurd enough. 
* * * * There is one thing that New England may justly 
claim the credit of teaching to the South, and that is the 
doctrine of secession. * * * The Encyclopedia writer 
ought to make claims that can be supported." — Philadelphia 
Inquirer, May 31, 1891. 

"Mr. Oglesby 's articles are truthful, brilliant, pungent and 
delightful. It would be impossible for a Southern man to read 
them and not feel a sense of increased pride in his section; 
and for the rising generation just such literature is needed 
to counteract the poison instilled by alien and embittered 
writers. The Times would like to see this interesting and in- 
structive little book in the hands of every Southern family. 
It is a text-book for the politician, for the student, and for 
everybody. It presents the facts of history on points in which 
every Southerner is vitally interested, because it is a complete 
refutation of current slanders impeaching the character of 
Southern people." — The Florence (Ala.) Times. 



''This is an able defense of the South against the aspersion 
of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a criticism of that work 
by Mr. T. K. Oglesby. It consists of a series of articles orig- 
inally published in the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, all of 
which are truthfully and pungently written. They are just 
such articles as are needed to do away with the false impres- 
sions of the South so industriously attempted to be circulated 
by her foreign and domestic enemies. They are conclusive evi- 
dence of the necessity of a history of the South by Southern 
men instead of allowing that work to be done by villifiers and 
traducers of this section." — The Richmond (Fa.) Times. 



**Mr. T. K. Oglesby has rendered the whole South a great 
service in a pamphlet which he has published, entitled 'The 
Britannica Answered and the South Vindicated,' with an 
array of facts that will make every Southerner still prouder of 
his native land. Every one who desires to know the truth of 



Some Truths of History. 5 

history, whether he be of Southern or of Northern birth, should 
read this pamphlet." — The Manufacturers' Eecord (Baltimore, 
Md.) 



''For the sake of your children get Mr. Oglesby's masterly 
vindication of the South and seal it in the volume that con- 
tains the slander, if your library is disgraced with it. We 
must fortify; we must defend. We must write our own his- 
tory and establish our glorious past before the civilized world. ' ' 
— Major Charles H. Smith {''Bill Arp") in The Atlanta Con- 
stitution. 



''Mr. T. K. Oglesby, who is well-known in South Carolina as 
a devoted son of the South, has written a little book which 
should be in the hands of every citizen who has pride in his 
State and people. It is a vindication of the South against 
the outrageous slander upon this section contained in the En- 
cyclopedia Britannica. * * * 

"Mr. Oglesby, in the space of his pamphlet of sixty pages, 
makes a brilliant and complete defense of the South from this 
vicious and lying charge. He gives a mass of facts, showing 
Southern achievement upon every line of thought, and afford- 
ing information to even the best informed of Southern men 
which will open their eyes to the glorious record of their sec- 
tion. No South Carolinian can afford to be without this little 
book. Nowhere else can he learn so much, in so small a space, 
about his people.'' — The State (Columbia, S. C.) 



"Evidently the Encyclopedia Britannica is not entitled to a 
high character for accuracy. What is wanted is a book of ref- 
erence that can be relied upon for facts gathered with pains- 
taking care and stated in their true order and proportions. 
Will the South have to write its own encyclopedia in order to 
escape the disgust the perusal of the Britannica inspires? 

' ' The answer ' Yes ' is given in a pamphlet by Mr. T. K. 
Oglesby, published at Montgomery, Ala., in which the Britan- 
nica 's treatment of the South is discussed. Mr. Oglesby pre- 
sents a long — a very long — list of Southern statesmen, generals, 
jurists, orators, poets, novelists, scientists and scholars who 
'since the Eevolution days' have won the admiration of man- 
kind, and that, too, without 'migrating to New York or Bos- 
ton in search of a university training.' Mr. Cable, it is true. 



6 Some Truths of History. 

has migrated, but no discerning person would include him in 
Mr. Oglesby's list. * * * 

''It was to be expected that the publishers of the Encyclope- 
dia Britannica, preferring to get at the truth, would take the 
pains to free its articles on American subjects from the defects, 
arising from sectional prejudices, that disfigure American ency- 
clopedias and other books published in the North. This, how- 
ever, it has clearly not done. It has apparently had its articles 
on American subjects written or edited in New England, and 
in the narrow provincial spirit of the literary men of that 
section. The quotation from its article on American literature 
must amaze readers who have acquaintance with the facts of 
American history.'' — The Sun (Baltimore, Md.) 



Prefatory Note. 



The following answer to the Encyclopedia Britanni- 
ca's aspersion of the South, and accompanying com- 
ment in criticism of that encyclopedia, were first 
published in the form of articles in the Montgomery 
(Ala.) Advertiser, in January, 1891. To refute the 
misrepresentation of the South by a book of world- 
wide circulation that was accepted as authority by 
so many people — to show that the stigma it places 
upon her is undeserved — and to further, to the extent 
at least of the circulation of the paper in which they 
were published, the establishing of the truth of his- 
tory in place of the grossly false so-called history 
which ignorance and prejudice have so long and with 
so much detriment to the South, caused to be taken 
for the truth, was the object of these articles. 

Shortly after their appearance in the columns of 
the Advertiser, an edition of the articles, under the 
title ''The Britannica Answered And The South Vin- 
dicated," was issued in pamphlet form, in compliance 
with requests so numerous as to indicate what seemed 
to be a very general desire. Many appreciative — and 
appreciated — expressions touching the pamphlet were 
received in personal letters from Boston to California, 
but the decision to issue another edition — the execu- 
tion of which has been long delayed for a convenient 



8 Some Truths of History. 

season — ^was chiefly induced by the two following let- 
ters: 

''M.VRIETTA, Ga., Nov. 20th, 1893. 
''T. K. Oglesby, Esq., New Orleans. 

*'My Dear Sir: I cannot undertake what I wish to 
say in regard to the pamphlet — 'The Britannica An- 
swered and the South Vindicated' — with a pen. * 
* * I cannot write to you; I must converse with 
you. 

*'In one sense your pamphlet gave me great com- 
fort ; in another sense quite the reverse. Words cannot 
convey an idea of the goneness about my heart which 
has now existed for so many years, created by the real- 
ization, constantly kept alive by new discovery, that 
Mr. Stephens's great work, 'The War Between the 
States/ had fallen, as it were, 'still-born' from the 
press ; that it was unread at the South ; that the edu- 
cated man at the South who knew anything of its 
contents was a 'rara avis.' That, however, was a 
work of two volumes ; but here — in the pamphlet — ^was 
a grouping of brief, lively articles brimful of thought 
and fact, which had appeared in a newspaper, and I, 
always eager to read anything defensive of the South, 
had never heard of them. So far as I was concerned 
— but for the incident which has brought us together 
— they might as well have been published in mid- Af- 
rica. Why were the articles not republished, at the 
time of their appearance, in some of the newspapers 
I am in the habit of reading? Why were they not 
thrown into all of our papers? Alas! alas! it is the 



Some Truths of History. 9 

same old story! The independent South has ceased 
to exist. The memory of the South is potent only in 
Confederate Veteran Associations. ****** 

' ' I observe that you placed your masterly and abso- 
lutely invaluable series of papers in aggregate form 
for the market. Am I venturing too far in asking 
what success you have met with — not with an eye to 
pecuniary profit — but to giving circulation to your 
work? 

''My dear sir, as I continue to write, I feel the op- 
pression growing heavier upon me that the pen (which 
I have come to wield so painfully and awkwardly) will 
not subserve my purpose. Do you not visit Georgia 
occasionally? Is it likely that you will be in Georgia 
soon? * * * * Most happy would I be to wel- 
come you under my roof, and so soon as you can come. 
I feel that I must see you if that be possible. * * * 

"Pray excuse my slovenly penmanship; * * * 
* * * and allow me to subscribe myself your sin- 
cere and admiring friend, 

''Henry R. Jackson.^' 

"Agricultural College, Miss., May 22, 1894. 
"Mr. T. K. Oglesby. 
"My Dear Sir : I write to express my great apprecia- 
tion of the pamphlet named 'The Britannica An- 
swered and the South Vindicated,' which was pub- 
lished by you, and to express the hope that you will 
get out a new edition of it in order that the very val- 
uable historical facts brought out in it may be further 



10 Some Truths of History. 

perpetuated, and placed on file in the libraries of the 
South. I consider the pamphlet one of the most com- 
plete and thorough vindications of the South that has 
been written by any one since the war. I prize it as 
the most valuable I have seen. I feel sure it will find 
a ready sale if reproduced, and I trust that you will 
have a new and enlarged edition published. * * * 
Your efforts in vindicating the South should have the 
thanks of every true Southerner. I am frank to say 
that I do not know of any one who has done more 
effective work in this direction than yourself. 
* ' With kind wishes, yours truly, 

''S. D. Lee.'' 

These two letters, especially, constrained me to feel 
it a duty — which I thought to have performed before 
now — to issue another edition of the publication to 
which they refer in terms which I cannot but feel are 
far beyond its merits. They came from two of the 
most illustrious representatives of that Old South 
that held the goodliest fellowship of knightly men and 
loyal women whereof this world holds record; — that 
South (now dead, alas, forever!) whose memory, to 
all who ever felt its charm, to all who ever inhaled the 
aroma of its rare civilization, is ' ' dear as remembered 
kisses after death." It was to vindicate that South 
from the charge of barbarism made against it by such 
a book as the Encyclopedia Britannica that the pam- 
phlet had been written, and it is with the desire that 
its facts "may be further perpetuated" — may be more 



Some Truths op History. 11 

widely circulated — that another edition is issued, 
under the present title, including, besides the original 
Advertiser articles and some additional matter incor- 
porated into them, other articles contributed by the 
writer to the press, and other matter of a historical 
character, worthy of note and preservation. 

One of the writers of the letters here quoted — Gen- 
eral Henry R. Jackson, soldier, orator, poet, lawyer, 
diplomat and statesman — is now the ''breather of an 
ampler day" with the host of glorious immortals with 
whom, in this life, he illustrated the land they loved 
so well. ''Ah! few and far on Glory's slope their 
lessening numbers stand." 

The other— General Stephen D. Lee — still lives, in 
hale old age, and will ever live in the hearts of his 
countrymen, for no brighter blade than his ever 
flashed in the battle's front to save their loved homes 
from war's desolation. 

The first of these letters shows how intensely its dis- 
tinguished writer felt with regard to whatever touched 
the name and fame of the South, and how deeply op- 
pressed he was at the thought — forced upon him by 
so much that he saw and read — that ' ' the independent 
South has ceased to exist," and that "the memory of 
the South is potent only in Confederate Veteran Asso- 
ciations. ' ' His death soon after my return to Georgia 
from the Southwest prevented me (a misfortune I 
shall ever deplore) from having the pleasure and priv- 
ilege of meeting and talking with General Jackson — 
or, rather, of hearing him talk, and tell of that historic 



12 Some Truths of History. 

past in which he lived and bore so distinguished a 
part. In a letter subsequent to the one here quoted he 
wrote that he had in mind the publication of a volume 
of personal recollections and reflections, and it is 
greatly to be regretted that he did not carry the pur- 
pose into execution, for there were few whose lives 
extended over a more interesting period than that dur- 
ing which he lived, and it would be hard indeed to 
find among the living the tongue and pen to speak 
and write with the eloquence of that widely accom- 
plished man. 

T. K. Oglesby. 
Atlanta, Ga., January, 1903. 



"We cannot too strongly urge upon our people the great 
importance of avoiding, as far as possible, the purchasing and 
disseminating of books and literature which are unkind and 
unfair to the South, which belittle our achievements, impugn 
our motives, and malign the characters of our illustrious leaders. 
An example of this kind of literature is the Encyclopaedia Brit- 
annica, which, while a work of exceptional merit in many par- 
ticulars, abounds in such a distortion of historical facts in 
reference to the South as could have emanated only from 
ignorance or malignity. A yet more flagrant example of this 
kind is a reprint in part of that encyclopaedia, known as the 
R. S. Peale reprint (published by the Werner Company, of 
Chicago), now being advertised in Southern newspapers. 
* * Justice to the South requires that the entire field of history 
be explored and its neglected facts be faithfully gathered and 
portrayed. We need a 'renaissance'' of history throughout the 
South.'' — From the reports of the Historical Committee of the 
United Confederate Veterans, at Birmingham, Ala. , April 25th, 
1894 ; Houston, Texas, May 23d, 1895 ; and Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, June 30th, 1896. 



SOME TRUTHS OF HISTORY. 



A Vindication of the South Agfainst the Encyclopedia 
Britannica and Other Mali§fnefs» 



I. 

** Since the Eevolution days the few thinkers of America 
born south of Mason and Dixon's line — out-numbered by those 
belonging to the single State of Massachusetts — have com- 
monly migrated to New York or Boston in search of a univer- 
sity training. In the world of letters, at least, the Southern 
States have shone by reflected light; nor is it too much to say 
that mainly by their connection with the North the Carolinas 
have been saved from sinking to the level of Mexico or the 
Antilles. Like the Spartan marshaling his helots, the planter 
lounging among his slaves was made dead to art. It has only 
flourished freely in a free soil, and for almost all its vitality 
and aspirations we must turn to New England." — Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica {ninth edition), Volume 1, p. 719. 

If the sons and daughters of the South do not them- 
selves uphold the truth of history, "the dust on an- 
tique time will lie unswept, and mountainous error be 
too highly heaped for truth to overpeer. ' ' As my mite 
towards averting a consummation so much to be 
deprecated, I desire to place before the public, through 
the columns of the Advertiser, in answer to the state- 
ments of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a summary of 
historical facts, showing that to the South, far more 
than to any other section, is this Union indebted for 
the genius, wisdom, enterprise, patriotism and valor 
that have given it so proud an eminence among the 
nations of the earth. I purpose to fix these facts in 
the firmament of truth, so grouped that the most care- 



16 Some Truths of History. 

less observer of that field can easily see and compre- 
hend them; and so that the children of the South can 
readily grasp them, and with them confound the ma- 
ligners of their fathers and their native land whenever 
occasion calls for their defense. The material for this 
purpose being too abundant to be comprised in a single 
article of appropriate length for the columns of a 
daily paper, this will, if you please, be followed by 
other articles in refutation of the Britannica's slur 
upon the South, and exposing its general worthlessness 
as an encyclopedia for Americans, and especially for 
Southern people. 

I will begin, then, the purposed refutation and ex- 
posure of the Britannica with the following simple 
statement of historic facts : 

The first President of the United States, and the 
most illustrious American — "the man first in war, 
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country- 
men;" the commander-in-chief of the army, under 
whose leadership the colonies won their independence, 
and on whom, by common acclaim, is bestowed the 
title, "the father of his country," — was a Southern 
man. 

The commander-in-chief of the Continental navy in 
the war of the Revolution was a Southern man,^ so was 
the first President of the Continental Congress,^ and 
a Southern member of that Congress was the author 
and mover of the adoption of the resolution declaring 
the Colonies free and independent States.^ 

1. James Nicholson. 2. Peyton Randolph. 3. Richard Henry Lee. 



Some Truths of History. 17 

The greatest American orator — the man whose 
words most inspired the American heart and nerved PaX^<-i<, 
the American arm in the struggle for independence — f/^vt/vM 
was a Southern man. 

The world's greatest Democrat, the author of the 
Declaration of Independence — the most famous pro- Ja-^V^-*^'*" 
duction of an American pen — was a Southern man, 
and when the peoples of the United States met to cele- 
brate the Centennial of that Declaration it was a 
Southern man who was selected to write the poem for 
the opening of that Centennial.^ 

''The father of the Constitution" was a Southern 
man;2 its greatest expounder — the greatest American 
jurist — was a Southern man f and when, in the fulness 
of time, the peoples of the Union came to celebrate the 
Centennial of that immortal instrument, it was a 
Southern man who was the chosen orator of that 
memorable and imposing occasion.* 

For more than half the period of its existence the 
Government formed by that Constitution was admin- 
istered by Presidents who were Southern men, and the 
years of their administrations mark immeasurably the 
happiest, most illustrious and beneficent eras of the 
Union. But nine men have been twice elected to the 
office of President of the United States; six of them 
were Southern men and six were slaveholders, and the 
only administration during which there was but one 

1. Sidney Lanier. 3. John Marshall. 

2. James Madison. 4. Samuel F. Miller. 

(2) 



\^J^^^ 



18 Some Truths of History. 

defaulter — and he for a very small sum — was that of 
John Tyler, a Southern man. 

It was the statesmanship of a Southern President,^ 
seconded by the ability of a Southern diplomat,^ that 
extended the boundary of the United States from the 
Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi river to the Pacific 
ocean on the northwest, thus adding to them a terri- 
tory greater in extent than their original limits; it 
was Southern valor and Southern statesmanship that 
carried the boundary on the southwest from the Sabine 
to the Rio Grande, and added Texas, New Mexico and 
California to the United States — an addition of 20,000 
square miles more than the original thirteen States 
had; it was the prowess of a Southern soldier^ that 
secured to the Republic all that territory northwest of 
the Ohio river, of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and part of Minne- 
sota, were afterwards made ; the policy that made 
that territory public domain — the common property 
of all the States — was the policy that has done 
more than any other to build up the Union, and 
it is indebted for that policy to the wisdom and 
patriotism of the Southern States of Maryland and 
Virginia, — to Maryland for proposing and urging 
it, and to Virginia for acceding to it, for that 
territory belonged to her, and in giving it to the 
United States for the sake of the Union (the gift of 
the South to the North) Virginia furnished the crown- 
ing proof of her devotion to that Union and became 

1. Thomas Jefferson. 2. James Momroe. 3. George Rogers Clark. 



Some Truths of History. 19 

the ' ' mother of States ' ' as she was already the ' ' moth- 
er of statesmen ' ' ; and the men who blazed the way 
for civilization in that vast region beyond the Missis- 
sippi and the Rocky Mountains — the most famous 
American explorers and adventurers — were Southern 
men. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Vir- 
ginians — Southerners — both, w^ere the first white men 
who crossed the continent of North America, — "the 
first to break into the world-old solitudes of the heart 
of the continent." Writing of them, Noah Brooks, 
the historian, says : * * Peaceful farms and noble cities, 
towns and villages, thrilling with the hum of modern 
industry and activity, are spread over the vast spaces 
through which these explorers threaded their toilsome 
trail, amid incredible privations and hardships, show- 
ing the way westward across the boundless continent 
which is ours. Let the names of these two men long be 
held in grateful honor by the American people ! ' ' 

For nearly two-thirds of the period of its existence 
has the Supreme Court of the United States — the 
sheet-anchor of the government — been presided over 
by Southern men, and their decisions constitute by 
far the wisest, purest and most luminous pages of the 
record of that august tribunal. 

The writer of our national anthem was a Southern 
man ;^ of the three contemporary American statesmen 
known as "the great trio,"^ two were Southern men, 
and it was one of these two whose statesmanship and 

!• Francis S. Key. 

2* Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. 



20 Some Truths op History. 

patriotism twice saved the Union from dismember- 
ment. 

The author of the Emancipation Proclamation was 
of Southern birth and lineage, and his biographer, who 
was his intimate friend and law partner, records that 
Abraham Lincoln said that all his better qualities 
came from his Southern ancestry.^ 

The first shot in the second war of the United States 
with England was fired by a Southern man,- the most 
distinguished soldiers of that war were Southern men, 
the most complete and overwhelming defeat that any 
English army has ever experienced was inflicted by 
Southern troops commanded by a Southern man;^ 
the man who performed what Admiral Nelson called 
"the most daring act of the age," and who received 
the thanks of all Europe for overthrowing the Barbary 
powers and putting an end to their inhuman cruelties, 
was a Southern man;^ the most distinguished soldiers 
of the war with Mexico were Southern men, and it was 
a Southerner who, amid unutterable cold and hunger 
and desolation, with his Fahrenheit thermometer at 
49° below zero, planted the "Star-Spangled- Banner" 
nearer the North Pole than any other mortal has ever 

1. "He said, among other things, that she (his mother) was the ille- 
gitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or 
planter, and he argued that from this last source came his power of 
analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition, and all the qualities 
that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the 
Hanks family. His theory in discussing the matter of hereditary traits 
had been, that, for certain reasons, illegitimate children are sometimes 
sturdier and brighter than those born in lawful wedlock; and in his case 
he believed that his better nature and finer qualities came from this 
broad-minded, unknown Virginian." — Herndon's Life of Lincoln, vol. 1, p. 3, 

2. Capt. John Rodgers, of Maryland. 

3. Andrew Jackson. 

4. Stephen Decatur. 



Some Truths of History. 21 

carried it, and wrested from England an honor she 
had held for three centuries — the honor of having 
reached the "furthest north/ '^ 

Seven times did the Abolition party during its exis- 
tence make Presidential nominations;^ five of these 
times (including the only times when it was successful) 
was its standard bearer a Southern man; of the two 
vice-presidents elected by it one was a Southern man f 
of its other vice-presidential candidates one was a 
Southerner* and the other — who was one of the 
founders and leaders of the "Free-soil" party and 
vice-president of the first National Convention of the 
Republican party — while not a native of the South, 
was the son of a Southern woman.^ The organizer and 
the first president of the "Underground Railroad" 
were Southern men,^ the publisher of the first aboli- 
tion journal in America was a Southern man, who was 
the real pioneer of American abolition^ (notwithstand- 
ing Henry Ward Beecher's quoted declaration that 
John Rankin — another Southerner — "was the father 
of abolitionism, the Martin Luther of the cause") ; 
and for several years during the first quarter of the 
nineteenth century the only periodicals devoted exclu- 
sively to the cause of abolitionism were published in 
the South,® during all of which time neither the pa- 



1. Lieutenant James B. Lockwood. 

2. 1840, '44, '48, '52, '56, '60, '64. 

3. Andrew Johnson, a North Carolinian. 

4. Thomas Morris. 

5. George W. Julian. 

6. Vestal Coffin, Levi Coffin (of North Carolina). 

7. Charles Osborn, of North Carolina. 

8. In Tennessee. 



22 Some Truths of History. 

pers nor their publishers and editors were interfered 
with in any manner. On the contrary, they met with 
more success than similar publications in the North 
had experienced, and their first encounter with mob 
violence was when they went North. The only anti- 
slavery societies that were really active at that period 
were the manumission societies in the South. It was 
the denunciatory violence and incendiary fanaticism 
of the disunion abolitionists of the North, who, later 
on, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips, Parker and 
others, made war on the Constitution of the United 
States, denounced it as ''a covenant with death and 
an agreement with hell, ' ' vowed they would not regard 
it, and repeatedly and persistently violated it, with 
the sanction and encouragement of their State govern- 
ments, — this it was that balked the movement for abol- 
ition in the South, deluged the land with blood and 
billowed it with graves, and destroyed the Union 
created by the Constitution which they so denounced — 
the Constitution made by the Revolutionary fathers, 
with Washington at their head. 

The first public or circulating library in America 
was in the South,^ a Southern State was the first to 
secure religious liberty by organic law,- the first 
Sunday-school established in America was in a South- 
ern State,^ the first native Methodist itinerant in 
America was a Southern man,* a Southern man was 



1. At Annapolis. 

2. Maryland. 

3. At Savannah, Georgia. 

4. William Watters, of Maryland and Virginia. 



Some Truths of History. 23 

the founder of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
New England/ the first American to establish schools 
exclusively for the education of young women was a 
Southern man,^ the first female college in the world 
was and is in a Southern State,^ the first post-gradu- 
ate medical school in this country was established by 
a Southern physician and surgeon,* the first college of 
dental surgery in the world was in a Southern city,^ 
the first man in the United States who received the 
degree of doctor of medicine was a Southern man,^ 
and so also was the first professor of pathological and 
surgical anatomy;'^ the first agricultural journal in 
this country was established by a Southern man,^ the 
first successful commercial paper in the United States 
was a Southern publication,** and I quote the words of 
that gifted and famous English woman and authoress, 
Harriet Martineau, in saying that, for more than fifty 
years after the Eevolution days, ''the best specimen 
of perioiical literature that the country afforded was 
the Souhern Review, published at Charleston" — 
CharlestoQ of the Old South. 

The man who first gave a complete description of 
the Gulf Stream — who first marked out specific routes 
to be f olloT^ed in crossing the Atlantic — who first insti- 

1. Jesse Lee, of Virginia. He was "the Apostle of Methodism" in New 
England. 

2. John Lylej of Virginia. 

3. The Wesle.'an Female College, Macon, Georgia. 

4. The New 'ork Polyclinic and Hospital, by Dr. John A. Wyeth, of 
Alabama, former ^resident of the New York State Medical Association. 

5. Baltimore. 

B6. Dr. John Acher, of Maryland. 

, 7, Dr. John Wigner, of South Carolina. 

1 8. The Americin Farmer, by John L. Skinner, of Maryland. 

. ,9. Tlie New Oraans Prices Current. 



24 Some Truths of History. 

tuted the system of deep-sea sounding — who first sug- 
gested the establishment of telegraphic communication 
between the continents by cable on the bed of the 
ocean, and who indicated the line along which the ex- 
isting cable was laid — whose Treatise on Navigation 
has been a text-book in the United States navy — who 
was declared by Humboldt to be the founder of a new 
and important science, and on whom France, Austria, 
Prussia, Russia, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, 
Sardinia, Holland, Bremen and the Papal States 
bestowed orders of laiighthood and other honors — was 
a Southern man ;^ and a Southern man originated the 
plan for splicing the cable in mid-ocean. - 

It was a Southern man who was declared by the 
French Academy of Sciences to have done more for 
the cause of agriculture than any other living man,^ 
the inventor of the Gatling gun was a Southern man,* 
and so was the inventor of the machinery th/it first 
propelled a boat by steam ;^ it was the inventif)n of a 
Southern man^ that made the Parrott gun elective, 
the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic w^nt from 
a Southern city, whose name it bore, and T^iose citi- 
zens had it built,^ and its engine was constriicted by a 
Southern man;^ and when the great inter-cbntinental 
railroad — the Three Americas Railway, wiich is to 
unite, by one continuous line. North, Qntral and 

1. Matthew Fontaine Maury. 

2. Dr. James C. Palmer, of Maryland. 

3. Cyrus H. McCormick. 

4. Richard J. Gatling, of North Carolina. 

5. James Rumsey, of Maryland. 

6. Dr. John Brahan Read, of Alabama. 

7. Savannah. 8. Daniel Dod, of Virginia. 



Some Truths of History. 25 



South America — has been built, history will record the 
name of a Southern man as its projector— as the one 
who will be known as the father of that far-reaching, 
colossal enterprise.^ The first act by a corporate body 
in the world adopting the locomotive engine as a trac- 
tive power on a railway for general passenger and 
freight transport, was by the board of directors of the 
South Carolina Railroad, and the first locomotive en- 
gine built for railway service in the United States was 
built for that road. 

The inventor of the first comprehensive system of 
ciphers used by the Associated Press,^ and of the first 
pyrotechnic system of signals in the United States,^ 
and of the original fire extinguisher,* and the author 
of international fog-signals^ — each of these was a 
Southern man; and no less an authority than Rear 
Admiral George E. Belknap, of the United States ' 
navy, says that, for the ease and accuracy with which ^ 
the depths of the sea are now measured, the world is in- 
debted primarily to the invention of John M. Brooke ; , 
— that to-day the machines in use the world over for | 
deep sea sounding, of whatever name or description, I 
are but modifications or adaptations of that invention. I 
To this statement of Rear Admiral Belknap I add | 
that John M. Brooke is the discoverer of the utility ^j 
of the air-space in cannon, that he is the inventor of | 
the Brooke gun, that he and John L. Porter devised ^ 

1. H. R. Helper, of North Carolina. 

2. Alexander Jones, M. D., of North Carolina. 

3. Henry J. Rogers, of Maryland. 

4. William A. Graham, of Virginia. 

5. Samuel P. Griffin, of Georgia. 



I 26 Some Truths of History. 

and constructed the first iron-clad warship in the 
world's history, that he received from King William 
(Emperor William I.) of Prussia the gold medal uf 
science awarded by the Academy of Berlin, and that 
; he is a Southern man, and was an officer in the Con- 
! federate States navy, as was John L. Porter, who 
shares with him the honor due the genius that planned 
and constructed the ship that revolutionized the na- 
vies of the world. This is an appropriate place, too, 
for mention of the fact that the founder and organizer 
of the United States Naval Academy was another 
Southern man, who was also an officer in the Con- 
federate States navy;^ and of the further fact that 
the organizer and constructor of the United States 
Naval Observatory — which he made one of the best 
in the world — was a Southern man, — the same who 
was the first constructor of a working astronomical 
observatory and the first publisher of a volume of 
\ astronomical observations in the United States.^ 

That which has been pronounced the most original 
discovery ever made in physical science by an Amer- 
ican was made by a native of the South ;^ the man 
who first used sulphuric ether to produce anaesthesia 
for surgical operations,^ the successful performer of 
the first operation for extirpation of the ovary on 
record — ''the father of ovariotomy,"^ the first who 

1. Franklin Buchanan, of Maryland. 

2. James Melville Gilliss. 

3. The discovery of oxygen in the sun by photography, by Henry Dra- 
per, native of Virginia. 

4. Dr. Crawford W. Long, of Georgia. 

5. Ephraim McDowell, of Virginia. 



Some Truths of History. 27 

performed the hip-joint amputation (one of the very- 
gravest of surgical operations) in the United States/ 
the physician and surgeon to whom the world is in- 
debted for one of the most notable modern advances 
in the art of surgery ("the bloodless method of 
Wyeth" as applied to the hip-joints and shoulder- 
joints),^ the man distinguished as the greatest lithoto- 
mist of the nineteenth century,^ and the world's 
greatest gynecologist/ — were all Southern men. 

The most learned American mineralogist/ the 
greatest American naturalist/ the most famous 
American musician/ the artist known as ''the Amer- 
ican Titian/'^ the greatest American architect/ and 
the world's greatest chess player/^' were all Southern 
men, as are the greatest American tragedian/^ and the 
most noted American dramatist/^ and the first Greek 
scholar in America to-day.^^ 

The first woman in the world who received a col- 



1. Dr. Walter Brashear, of Kentucky. 

2. Dr. John A. Wj'eth, of Alabama, who was a soldier in the Confed- 
erate army. 

3. Benjamin W. Dudley, of Virginia. 

4. J. Marion Sims, of South Cai'olina. 

5. John Lawrence Smith, of South Carolina. He was employed by the 
Turkish government to explore its mineral resources, and it still derives 
part of its income from his discoveries. He received the order of Nichan 
Iftabar and that of the Medjidieh from that government, and the order 
of St. Stanislas from Russia, and the cross of the Legion of Honor from 
Napoleon IIL He was also inventor of the inverted microscope. 

6. Audubon, of Louisiana. 

7. Gottschalk, of Louisiana. 

8. Washington Allston, of South Carolina. 

9. Henry H. Richardson, of Louisiana. 

10. Paul Morphy, of Louisiana. 

11. Edwin Booth, of Maryland. 

12. Augustin Daly, of North Carolina. 

18. Basil L. Gildersleeve, of South Carolina (Greek professor in Johns 
Hopkins University). 



28 Some Truths of History. 

lege diploma was a Southern woman/ so was the 
first woman in the world to direct and conduct a great 
daily political newspaper,^ and the only w^oman on 
record who was the wife of a governor, the sister of 
a governor, the niece of a governor, the mother of a 
governor and the aunt and foster-mother of a gov- 
ernor, was a Southern woman.^ 

How stands the Britannica's assertion in the light 
of these facts? 

II. 

The facts I have already stated are enough and more 
than enough to vindicate the South from the aspersions 
of the Encyclopedia Britannica, but the occasion, and 
the fact that there are some who — unduly impressed 
by the high-sounding title and the imposing claims 
of that pretentious and ponderous collection of ab- 
truse essays — are inclined to make a literary fetish 
of it, require that something further be here written 
in contrasting its statements with the truth of his- 
tory. 

The Britannica, in its article on American Liter- 
ature, naming the two Carolinas as types of the South- 
ern States, asserts that mainly by their connection 
with the North have they been saved from sinking 
to the level of Mexico or the Antilles — from becoming, 
in short, a set of semi-barbarians. To this explicit as- 
sertion, so degrading to Southern people, I oppose an 

1. Mrs. Catherine E. Benson (Miss Brewer), of Georgia. 

2. Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, of the New Orleans Picayune. 
8. Mrs. Richard Manning, of South Carolina. 



Some Truths of History. 29 

explicit denial, and I hale the Britannica before the 
tribunal of History, whose record it has falsified. 

A FURTHER APPEAL TO THE RECORD. 

What says that record further ? Was it in the South, 
or in the North — in the Carolinas, or in Massachu- 
setts — that a law was made prescribing that a person, 
if once convicted of being a Quaker, should lose 
one ear, — if twice so convicted, should lose another 
ear, — and if convicted the third time of the dia- 
bolical crime of Quakerism, was to be bored through 
the tongue with a red-hot iron? Was it in the 
South, or in the North — in the Carolinas, or in Mas- 
sachusetts — that a penalty was inflicted on any one 
who entertained a Quaker, and men and women were 
banished on pain of death and hung — for being 
Quakers? Was it in the South, or in the North — in 
the Carolinas, or in Massachusetts — that decrepit old 
men were hung and pressed to death, and pure, inno- 
cent women were torn from their children and jailed* 
and hung — as witches 1 Was it in the South, or in the. : 
North — in the Carolinas, or in Massachusetts — thatj 
children were tied neck and heels together till tl 
blood was ready to gush from them, to make thei 
swear falsely against their own mother — accused oJ 
being a witch ? Was it here or tttre that men were 
hung for denying the existence oi witchcraft? And 
were they of the North, or of the South — of Massa- 
chusetts, or the Carolinas — the preachers and 
judges who incited and applauded the jailing, and 



30 Some Truths of History. 

banishing, and torturing and slaughtering of Quakers 
and "witches"; and the people who w^ere wont to go 
from church — from the altar of God — to the public 
whipping-post to see women whipped on the bare 
back? And where was it that negro children were 
sold by the pound like so much beef or bacon (see Mrs. 
Earle's Customs and Fashions in Old Neiv England) ; 
and what province was it that passed a statute offer- 
ing £100 per scalp for the scalps of twelve-year-old 
Indian boys, and that, too, at a time when no Indian 
war was going on there ?^ To each and all of these 
questions, History, with its inexorable, unerring pen, 
answers — ' ' Massachusetts ! ' ' 

And where was it that, only a few years ago, the 
skin of persons who had died as inmates of an alms- 
house was tanned and made into articles of merchan- 
dise? Have we not the authority of one who is him- 
self a distinguished citizen of that State for saying 
that this tanning of human hide for commercial pur- 



1. Perhaps it was from this precedent, set by pious New England fore- 
fathers, that General Jacob Smith, of the United States army in tlie Phil- 
ippines (1902), got the inspiration for the order to the soldiers under his 
command to kill all Filipinos over ten years old; though Northern repre- 
sentatives in Congress, upholding Smith, said that his "kill and bum" 
O^der had ample precedent in orders issued by Lincoln and Grant and 
examples set by Sherman and Sheridan during the war of the North on 
the South. (See speech of Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania, in Congress, 
May 15, 1902.) It is therefore quite likely that Smith's order to kill and 
burn in the Philippines until they were made "a howling wilderness" 
needed no other inspiration than he found in those examples, and espec- 
ially in a telegram from one to another of the above named generals which 
ran as follows: "Until we can repopulate Georgia it is useless for us to 
occupy it; but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people, will 
cripple their military resources. I can make this march, and make Georgia 
howl." This telegram was dated Oct. 9, 1864; was sent to General U. S. 
Grant, and was signed "W. T. Sherman." Anthony Trollope, the distin- 
guished English author, says that in 1861 he heard Wendell Phillips make 
a speech in Boston in which "he preached the doctrine of rapine, blood- 
shed and social destruction" against the South. 



Some Truths of History. 31 

poses was in Massachusetts? Did not no less a per- 
sonage than the Governor of that State say so ?^ 

Another instance of the superior brand of civiliza- 
tion furnished by Massachusetts is given by Madame 
de Riedesel, wife of a German general in Burgoyne's 
army, who says in her memoir that she was cruelly 
insulted by Boston women, and that the wife and 
young daughter of Captain Fenton, a royalist absen- 
tee, were stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and 
paraded through the city. 

Once upon a time fourteen negroes, who were sus- 
pected of incendiarism and intended insurrection, 
were thrown into jail, tried without counsel, were not 
permitted to testify in their own behalf, were convict- 
ed without evidence that warranted conviction, and 
burned at the stake. A white man, accused of inciting 
the negroes to incendiarism, was hung. It afterwards 
appeared that they were all innocent of the charges 
against them. All this was in a Northern State and 
city — the State and city of New York. (And these are 
the people who raise their voices in raucous roars and 
hypocritical howls to heaven when white men of the 
South lynch a negro for raping a white woman.) 

Once upon another time a man whose hands were 
dyed with the blood of men whom he had assassinated 
under cover of the darkness of night, was caught in 
the very act of inciting negroes to incendiarism and in- 



1. Several years after this was printed there was a revelation of bar- 
barities practiced in public institutions in New England and elsewhere in 
the North, as shocking as the dungeon horrors of Europe brought to light 
by John Howard more than a hundred years ago. 



32 Some Truths of History. 

surrection — caught by the very people whose homes 
he was inciting the negroes to burn and whose 
lives he was inciting them to take. He was tried in 
accordance with the laws of the land — ^having every 
right, including able counsel — to which they entitled 
him ; was convicted and hung. This was in the South- 
ern State of Virginia. The incendiary midnight as- 
sassin who was thus inciting negroes to murder and 
arson — to ' ' kill and burn ' ' — and who was so convicted 
and hung, was a Northern man, hailing from New 
England, and he has been canonized and classed with 
Jesus Christ in that super-civilized region. 

In view of this barbarous and bloody record should 
it be a matter of much surprise that the man whom 
the Chicago Times-Herald called ''the criminal of 
the century" was a product of New England? "Hu- 
man history," said the Herald, ''may be ransacked in 
vain to find a parallel to this criminal. He is a 
prodigy of infamy without a parallel in all the world. ' ' 
(See Times-Herald editorial on the murderer 
Holmes, April 13, 1896.) This scion of New Eng- 
land entered upon his criminal career to get lucre, 
and in the space of a few years he had murdered 
twenty-seven people, male and female, old and young. 
Yes, this "Criminal of the Century" was a native 
— not of the South — but of that section which the 
Britannica says has saved the South, and especially 
the Carolinas, from sinking into barbarism. 



Some Truths of History. 33 

words from washington. 

What was it that, most of all, filled the great heart 
of Washington with grief, and doubt, and despond- 
ency in that first winter of the Revolution, when he 
was straining every nerve to keep an army before 
Boston? Read the answer in his own almost despair- 
ing words. Writing from Cambridge to a trusted 
friend — after telling of the lack of powder and arms, 
and money — he says: "These are evils but small in 
comparison of those which disturb my present repose. 
Our enlistments are at a stand. The fears I ever 
entertained are realized; that is, the discontented 
officers have thrown such difficulties or stumbling- 
blocks in the way of recruiting that I no longer enter- 
tain a hope of completing the army by voluntary 
enlistments. The reflection upon my situation pro- 
duces many an uneasy hour when all around me are 
wrapt in sleep. " ' ' To be plain, ' ' he continues, ' ' these 
people are not to be depended on;" and he advises 
appealing to their cupidity by the offer of large boun- 
ties, for (he adds) "notwithstanding all the public 
virtue which is ascribed to these people, there is no 
nation under the sun that pays greater adoration to 
money than they do. "^ Who were "these people" — 
the people of whom Washington wrote these words? 
Whence came the troops of whom Alexander Gray don, 
a Revolutionary soldier of Pennsylvania, recorded in 

1. Washington to Joseph Reed. 
(3) 



34 Some I'ruths of History. 

his memoirs these words : "It appeared that the sor- 
did spirit of gain was the vital principle of this part 
of the army ? ' '^ Were the people of whom Washington 
wrote, and the troops to whom Gray don referred, from 
the North, or from the South — from New England 
or the Carolinas? Again, History, making response 
to this question, answers: '^New England!" (Who 
can help thinking, right here, in conection with the 
words of Washington and Graydon, of that general 
of the Revolution whose "sordid spirit of gain" made 
him a traitor to his country? Benedict Arnold was 
not a Carolinian nor a Southern man.) 

In the government archives is a memorandum by 
Thomas Jefferson of a consultation with Mr. Living- 
ston, in which are these words : ' ' They are avaricious 
and venal, looking always for gain." The "they" 
referred to were the people of Connecticut. In 1821 
Achille Murat — son of the famous Marshal Murat and 
nephew of Napoleon — came to the United States to 
live. A few years later, writing to Count Thibaudeau, 
he said: "They are eager to amass wealth, and will 
frankly confess, like Petit- Jean: 'Without money, 
honor's a disease.' " The "thej^" to whom Achille 
Murat referred were the people of New England. 

HELP FROM THE SOUTH. 

With enlistments at a stand, and without powder 

1. "I have been credibly informed that it was no unusual thing in 
the army before Boston for a colonel to make drummers and fifers of his 
sons, thereby not only being able to form a very snug, economical mess, 
but to aid also considerably the revenue of the family chest." Graydon's 
Memoirs, p. 148. 



Some Truths of History. 35 

for the troops he had, and among a people "whose 
vital principle seemed to be the sordid spirit of gain/' 
what wonder was it that the unselfish Southern pat- 
riot had' such gloomy forebodings ? Happily for him 
and for the country his sorest immediate need was 
about to be sup lied. A British ship loaded with pow- 
der was captured off Savannah about this time by a 
vessel commissioned for the purpose by the Provincial 
Congress of Georgia, and,, badly as it was needed at 
the South, a large portion of it was immediately dis- 
patched to the army at Cambridge — for the South 
had declared that ''the cause of Boston is the cause 
of all." This was the first capture ordered by any 
American Congress; the vessel that made it was the 
first vessel commissioned for warfare in the Revolu- 
tion, and it was this powder, thus captured, that en- 
abled Washington to drive the British from Boston. 

TALLEYRAND RELATES AN INCIDENT, AND CHANNING AND 
BRYANT WRITE LETTERS. 

Talleyrand relates that when he was in this country 
he met a citizen of Maine who had never seen Wash- 
ington. Talleyrand asked him if he would not, when 
he visited Philadelphia, like to see that great man. 
The Maine citizen said he would be pleased to see 
Washington, but evinced a much greater desire "to 
see Mr. Bingham, who they say is so rich." In the 
eyes of the Maine man George Washington was ' ' small 
potatoes" in comparison with "the rich Mr. Bing- 
ham." 



36 Some Truths of History. 

Nearly a quarter of a century after Washington 
penned at Cambridge the letters quoted above, Wil- 
liam Ellery Channing wrote from Richmond these 
words: "I blush for my own people when I compare 
the selfish prudence of a Yankee with the generous 
confidence of a Virginian. There is one single trait 
which attaches me to the people here more than all the 
virtues of New England, — they love money less than 
we do; they are more disinterested — their patriotism 
is not tied to their purse-strings." Still forty years 
later we find William Cullen Bryant, of Massachu- 
setts, writing — *Hhe South certainly has the advan- 
tage over us in the point of manners." Yet a third 
of a century later a distinguished son of Pennsylvania, 
a philosophic student of history, with the intellect to 
see and the courage and honesty to declare the truth, 
bears this testimony: "Slavery not only consisted 
with, but it naturally produced and sustained a so- 
ciety, on the whole, less erring than existed in the 
North, and, probably, than in the emancipated South 
will ever exist without it. * * * That political 
virtue, more important to a republic than private vir- 
tue, which has become less and less common in the 
North, did not decay in the South. The political South 
produced more truly independent spirits than the 
North." {Fears For Democracy, by Charles Inger- 
soll.) "I thought" — wrote William H, Seward of 
the Legislature of Virginia, at which he took a look 
on a trip in early life through that State — ' ' I thought 
that the intelligence, capacity, manners and tone of 



() H 



Some Truths of History. 37 

the debates, as well as the dress and carriage of the 
members generally, rather excelled our own" (the 
New York Legislature). Be it noted that it is the 
Old South to which Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Seward 
refer, and it was to the society of the Old South that 
Anthony Trollope referred when, after visiting the 
United States in 1861, he wrote: "Everybody ac- 
knowledged that society in Washington had been al- 
most destroyed by the loss of the Southern half of 
the usual sojourners in that city." 

THE TRAIL OF THE MONEY DEVIL OVER THEM ALL. 

The Vice-President of the United States who ac- 
cepted bribes and perjured himself to escape expos- 
ure — the Speaker of the House of Representatives 
(afterwards the candidate of the R^ublican parly 
for the Presidency) who gave the influence of his 
high place in exchange for lucre^ — the Cabinet Min- 
ister who was impeached for selling appointments to 
the highest bidder — and the Credit Mobilier Congress- 
men — were these of the North or the South? All, 
all Northern. 

THE BRITANNICA SAYS IT WAS. 

Was it their connection with the people whose 
manners Bryant characterized as being inferior — 

1. "He had converted the power of his ^eat place into lucre, and was 
exposed. By mingled chicanery and audacity he obtained possession of his 
own criminating letters, flourished them in the face of the House, and, 
in the Cambyses vein, called on his people to rally and save the luster 
of his loyaltj' from soil at the hands of rebels; and they came. From all 
the North ready acclaims went up, and women shed tears of joy, such 
as in King Arthur's day rewarded some peerless deed of Galahad. In truth 
it was a manly thing to hide dishonorable plunder beneath the prostrate 
body of the South." — Destruction and Reconstruction (Taylor), p. 237. 



38 Some Truths of History. 

whose "patriotism" (said Channing) **is tied to 
their purse strings" — whose "vital principle" (said 
Graydon) "appeared to be the sordid spirit of gain" 
— who (said Washington) "pay greater adoration to 
money than any nation under the sun, and are not 
to be depended on" — was it by their connection with 
these people and their Quaker-hanging, " witch "-kill- 
ing ancestry and bribe-taking posterity that Southern 
people have been saved from sinking into barbarism? 
The Britannica says it was. What says the truth of 
history ? 

THE MEN HE DID DEPEND ON. 

"These people are not to be depended on," wrote 
Washington of the New England troops; but at a 
later period, when he was sending reinforcements to 
General Gates in response to an appeal from that offi- 
cer, he wrote : "I have dispatched Col. Morgan with 
his corps of riflemen to your assistance. This corps I 
have great dependence on." Later, when he himself 
needed reinforcements and asked that Morgan and 
his men be sent back. Gates replied that he could not 
then afford "to part with the corps the army of Gen- 
eral Burgoyne was most afraid of. ' ' History tells us 
that the men on whom Washington had such "great 
dependence," and of whom Burgoyne 's army "was 
most afraid" were — not from New England, but — 
from Virginia, that land where, said Channing, 
' ' their patriotism is not tied to their purse-strings. ' ' 

"These people of the Southern Colonies," said Ed- 



Some Truths of History. 39 

mund Burke, the great British statesman, ''are much 
more strongly, and with an higher and more stubborn 
spirit, attached to liberty than those to the north- 
ward." "The gallantry of the Southern men has 
inspired the whole army," wrote Adjutant-General 
Reed (of New Jersey) after the Long Island cam- 
paign of 1776.1 

THREE HISTORIC DOCUMENTS. 

In the archives of the Government at Washington 
are three historic documents worthy of consideration 
in this connection. The first one, in point of time, 
reads thus: 

** Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia. 

' ' Chambersburg, Pa., June 27, 1863. 
''General Order No. 73. 
"The Commanding General has observed with 
marked satisfaction the conduct of the troops on the 
march, and confidently anticipates results commen- 
surate with the high spirit they have manifested. 
No troops could have displayed greater fortitude or 
better performed the arduous marches of the past ten 
days. Their conduct in other respects has, with few 
exceptions, been in keeping with their character as 

1. General Knox (of Massachusetts) was Secretary of War during the 
Revolution. According to his report the North sent to the army 100 men 
for everv 227 of military age, as shown by the census of 1790, and the 
South 100 for every 209. In 1848 one out of every sixty-two of the men 
of military age in' 1790 in the North was a Revolutionary pensioner, and 
one out of every 110 in the South. Of these pensioners New England had 
3,146, more than were in all the South, and New York two-thirds as many, 
though she contributed not one-seventh as many men to the war. 



N* 



40 Some Truths of History. 

soldiers, and entitles them to approbation and praise. 
There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness 
on the part of some that they have in keeping the 
yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the 
duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity 
are not less obligatory in the country of our enemy 
than in our own. The Commanding General consid- 
ers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, 
and through it our whole people, than the perpetra- 
tion of the barbarous outrages upon the innocent and 
defenceless, and the wanton destruction of private 
property that have marked the course of the enemy 
in our own country. Such proceedings not only dis- 
grace the perpetrators and all connected with them, 
but are subversive of the discipline and efficiency of 
the army, and destructive of the ends of our present 
movements. It must be remembered that we make 
war only on armed men, and that we can not take 
vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered 
without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose 
abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our 
enemy, and offending against Him to whom vengeance 
belongeth. 

"The Commanding General therefore earnestly ex- 
horts the troops to abstain, with most scrupulous care, 
from unnecessary or wanton injury to private prop- 
erty, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and 
bring to summary punishment all who shall in any 
way offend against the orders on this subject. 

[Signed.] ''R. E. Lee, General." 



Some Truths of History. 41 

The second one of the documents referred to is a 
letter dated — ''Headquarters of the Army, Washing- 
ton, December 18, 1864," addressed to "Major-Gen- 
eral W. T. Sherman, "Savannah," and concluding 
thus: "Should you capture Charleston, I hope that 
by some accident the place may be destroyed, and if 
a little salt should be sown upon its site, it may 
prevent the growth of future crops of nullification 
and secession. "Yours truly, 

[Signed.] "H. W. Halleck, Chief -of -Staff. " 

The third document is a letter in which are these 
words : "I will bear in mind your hint as to Charles- 
ton, and do not think 'salt' will be necessary. When 
I move, the Fifteenth Corps will be on the right of 
the right wing, and their position will naturally bring 
them into Charleston first; and, if you have watched 
the history of that corps, you will have remarked that 
they generally do their work pretty well. The truth 
is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable de- 
sire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I 
almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves 
all that seems in store for her. * # * ^^ must 
make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard 
hand of war as well as their organized armies. ' ' This 
letter is dated — "Headquarters Military Division of 
the Mississippi, in the Field, Savannah, December 24, 
1864;" is adressed to "Major-General H. W. Hal- 
leck, Chief-of-Staff, Washington, D. C," and is 
signed — "W. T. Sherman, Major-General. " 



42 Some Truths op History. 

The burning dwelling-houses along the line of his 
march, and the wail of women and children left starv- 
ing and unsheltered in the depth of winter attested 
how well "the Fifteenth Corps" maintained the repu- 
tation to which their commander so proudly pointed.^ 

WHICH WAS THE BARBARIAN? 

Which was the barbarian — the Southerner, who 
wrote the first of these documents, or the Northern 
man who wrote the last ? The Southerner, from a long 
line of Southern ancestry ; or the Northern man, with 
generations of Northern ancestors behind him? Rob- 
ert E. Lee, or William Tecumseh Sherman?^ 

III. 

The Britannica is particularly at fault in citing the 
Carolinas as types of the Southern States in its asser- 
tion (in the article on American Literature) that they 
have been saved from sinking to the level of Mexico 
or the Antilles mainly by their connection with the 

1. See Addendum A. 

2. "Our Southern homes have been pillaged, sacked and burned; our 
mothers, wives and little ones driven forth amid the brutal insults of 
your soldiers. Is it any wonder that we fight with desperation? A natural 
revenge would prompt us to retaliate in kind, but we scorn to war on 
women and children. We are fighting for the God-given rights of liberty 
and independence as handed down to us in the Constitution by our fath- 
ers. So fear not: if a torch is applied to a single dwelling, or an insult 
offered to a female of your town by a soldier of this command, point me 
out the man and you shall have his life."— General John B. Gordon, of 
the Confederate States army, to the women of York, Pa. "Towards the 
enemy's vessels and their crews you are to proceed, in exercising the rights 
of war, with all the justice and humanity which characterize this govern- 
ment and its citizens." — Instructions of President Davis to the command- 
ers of Confederate privateers. (The crew of one of these privateers being 
captured, the United States government put them in irons, and when Presi- 
dent Davis himself was captured the present commanding general of the 
United States army— a Massachusetts man — put him in irons.) 



Some Truths of History. 43 

North. A more unfortunate reference, to illustrate 
its imputation of Southern barbarism, could not have 
been made by the foreign cyclopedia, as will, I think, 
be clearly shown by what I will here say in relation 
to the stigma it puts upon those two States especially, 
and through them on the South generally. 
And first, of 

THE OLD NORTH STATE. 

There are no people in the Union nor in the world 
among whom are to be found more of the attributes 
of sound mental, moral and physical manhood than 
those which characterize the people of North Carolina. 
Her sons shed, at Alamance, the first blood spilled in 
the Colonies in resistance to British rule — long before 
a gun was fired at Lexington and Concord ; her Meck- 
lenburg County — which Cornwallis called a ''hornet's 
nest," and where he encountered, he said, the most 
obstinate rebels he had found in America — proclaimed 
its "declaration of independence" more than a year 
before the one at Philadelphia ; she was the first Col- 
ony to act as a unit in favor of independence; and 
about the time a deputation of Bostonians were ap- 
pealing to Washington to allow the beleaguered Brit- 
ish to get out of Boston unmolested, for fear of dis- 
turbing trade and damaging the shops by a fight, 
North Carolina soldiers, at Moore's Creek Bridge, 
were winning the first real victory on a battlefield of 
the Revolution; and it was Gen. Hugh AVaddell of 
North Carolina, who,, with Gen. John Ashe of the 



44 Some Truths of History. 

same State, resisted the landing of the British stamps 
at Old Brunswick in 1766 — several years before the 
*' Boston tea-party," and they didn't go about it in 
disguise, either. 

A STRIKING coincidence. 

The Bostonians above m^entioned were undoubtedly 
the ancestry of those other representative citizens of 
Massachusetts who, about forty years later, were se- 
cretly plotting in a convention at Hartford the se- 
cession of the New England States from the Union, 
because their trade was hurt by the war for the main- 
tenance of American rights and honor which was then 
going on between the United States and England, and 
the Hartford Conventionists were unquestionably the 
close kith and kin of those other representative citi- 
zens of New England who, during that trying time in 
the history of our country, burned blue lights on the 
Connecticut coast to put the British on guard against 
Decatur's plans for attacking them; and it is a strik- 
ing coincidence that just about the time when New 
England was thus, by threats of secession, endeavoring 
to paralyze the arm of the Government and giving 
aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war, de- 
scendants of the above mentioned North Carolinians 
were mauling the life out of that enemy at New Or- 
leans. 

Who can doubt that Decatur, the Southerner and 
the patriot, had the secession plotters and blue-light 
burners of New England in his mind when he uttered 



Some Truths of History. 45 

the memorable sentiment: ''Our country! In her 
intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be 
in the right. But our country, right or wrong ! ' ' 

THE FIRST SECESSION CONVENTION. 

That Convention at Hartford was the first Seces- 
sion Convention in the history of the Union, and was 
presided over by the great-grand- father of Mr. Henry 
Cabot Lodge,, of Force Bill notoriety, who is now a 
representative of Massachusetts in Congress; and it 
was just about four years before the holding of that 
convention that Josiah Quincy, also of Massachusetts, 
made the first speech in Congress in favor of seces- 
sion. Thus does the record show that while the South 
was fighting to uphold the rights and honor of the 
Union, the New England States, with "their patriot- 
ism tied to their purse-strings, ' ' were plotting to break 
it up because the war interrupted their trade for 
a while. ^ 

ANOTHER COINCIDENCE. 

To return to the Revolution. North Carolina was 
the recruiting ground for the entire South and its 
chief dependence in those days, and about the time 
when Arnold, the New England general who turned 
traitor for British gold, was plundering in Virginia, 

1. As early as April 15th, 1801, we find Gideon Granger, of Connecticut 
(then Postmaster-General) writing to President Jefferson as follows: "With 
us in Connecticut the prospect is not pleasing. The exertions of our clergy 
and aristocracy at yesterday's election have exceeded everything before 
known. The torrents of abuse from the pulpit were incredible, and this 
State, whose representatives have the damning credit of planning the ruin 
of our happy Constitution," etc. 



46 Some Truths of History. 

North Carolinians, under Sevier and Shelby, Cleve- 
land and McDowell, were striking the British that 
deadly blow at King's Mountain that turned the tide 
of the Revolution and eventuated in the capture of 
Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown, and in the 
independence of all the Colonies and the estab- 
lishment of the United States of America. It was 
during the time, too, when Arnold, of Connecticut, 
was engaged in the manner above related, that Jethro 
Sumner, of North Carolina, made that bayonet charge 
which saved the Americans from disastrous defeat at 
Eutaw. 

THE BRITANNICA DOESN't MENTION THEM. 

But Sevier, and Shelby, and Jethro Sumner, and 
King's Mountain are names not to be found in the 
Britannica's history of the United States. A history 
of the United States with no allusion to the battle of 
King's Mountain! Think of a history of France 
without any account of Valmy ! Or a history of Ger- 
many without the story of the battle which rolled 
back from that country the Roman invasion and 
caused the Roman Emperor to cry in vain to Varus 
for his legions! For, but for King's Mountain the 
British monarch would not have had to mourn his 
legions lost at Yorktown. 

In this connection it may be noted that the Brit- 
annica has no article on Yorktown, and its article on 
Saratoga makes no mention of the capture of Bur- 



Some Truths of History. 47 

goyne's army there — the very thing that gives Sara- 
toga its historic interest. 

Cornelius Harnett, Richard Caswell, Robert Howe 
— glorious names in American history — James Iredell, 
as able a jurist as ever sat on the bench of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States; William Gaston, 
Willie P. Mangum, George E. Badger — all these have 
shed luster on the American name, in the field or in 
the forum, and all were of North Carolina, but not one 
of them is named in the Britannica. 

And that most illustrious son of ''the Old North 
State" — the real American Cincinnatus — whom Jef- 
ferson called ''the last of the Romans," and of whom 
John Randolph said — "He is the wisest, the purest, 
the best man I ever knew"; what of him in the Brit- 
annica? Search it through and you will never learn 
from its diffuse pages that such a man as Nathaniel 
Macon ever lived — a man of whom it is recorded that 
during fifty-seven years of political life and power 
he never recommended any of his family to public 
office. (What a contrast to another public function- 
ary, of later years— a President of the United States 
and a Northern man, of whom it is said that he quar- 
tered on the public treasury all his own relatives, all 
his wife's relatives, and all the relatives of these rela- 
tives, to the remotest cousinhood.) No, you will find 
nothing of Nathaniel Macon in the Britannica, but 
you will find in it over a column about one Ambrosius 
Theodosius Macrobius, who died more than a thousand 
years ago. 



48 Some Truths of History. 

James K. Polk, eleventh President of the United 
States, was a North Carolinian, and Bancroft, the 
great American historian, has said that, ''viewed from 
the standpoint of results, Polk's was perhaps the 
greatest administration in our national history, cer- 
tainly one of the greatest. ' ' 

AND THE BIGGEST MAN ! 

Finally, Nature, as if not satisfied with bestowing 
so many other marks of distinction upon North Car- 
olina, brought into being and reared upon her soil the 
biggest man, in mere physical proportions, of whom 
there is any mention in the history of this country.^ 

south CAROLINA. 

And South Carolina — "the nurse of manly senti- 
ment and heroic enterprise," where has ever been 
found in the highest degree "that sensibility of prin- 
ciple, that chastity of honor which feels a stain like a 
wound and inspires courage while it mitigates feroc- 
ity;" South Carolina — where life's most exquisite 
grace abides — saved from barbarism by connection 
with Massachusetts ! Shades of the long line of states- 
men, heroes, orators and scholars of the Palmetto 
State who have illumined history's pages by your 
words and deeds, could ignorance or reckless misrep- 
resentation further go? 

"South Carolina has distinguished herself by a 
phalanx of talent unequaled in the Union. In my 

1. Miles Darden. He weighed over 1,000 pounds. 



Some Truths of History. 49 

travels I have found the society of Charleston by far 
the best, both here as well as on the other side of the 
Atlantic. There is nothing wanting either as regards 
finish or elegance of manners; but — what is of more 
value to people such as ourselves, who attach little 
importance to refined politeness — she abounds in real 
talents, and is as far above pedantry as insignifi- 
cance." Thus wrote Achille Murat to his friend, 
Count Thibaudeau, after traveling through the United 
States seventy years ago. 

It was William Henry Drayton, of South Carolina, 
w^hose writings contributed so much to enlighten the 
public mind in this country and Great Britain during 
the Revolutionary period, and to whose celebrated 
charge to the Charleston grand jury Mr. Jefferson has 
been thought to have been indebted for some of the 
most effective parts of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence ; it w^as John Rutledge, of South Carolina, whose 
services were of such inestimable value to the Amer- 
ican cause in its most desperate straits, — who was pro- 
nounced by Patrick Henry to be the greatest orator 
in the Continental Congress, — who was the first asso- 
ciate justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States and the second chief justice appointed by 
Washington ; it was John Laurens, of South Carolina, 
who was distinguished as "the Chevalier Bayard of 
the Revolution," and who was said by John Adams 
to have done more for the United States in the short 
time of his being in Europe as their special envoy 



so Some Truths of History. 

than all the rest of their diplomatic corps put togeth- 
er;^ it was Francis Marion who was the most capable 
and famous partisan soldier of the Revolution; it 
was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, 
who was the author of the clause in the Constitution 
forbidding the requiring of any religious test as a 
qualification for office or public trust in the United 
States. 

DID THEY GET THEM FROM THE NORTH? 

Did Laurens get the knightly spirit of a Bayard 
from connection in any way with the ancestry who 
transmitted the qualities that inspired William T. 
Sherman when he wrote that he didn't think it would 
be necessary to sow salt on the site of Charleston when 
''the Fifteenth Corps" got in their work on that city? 
Did Pinckney get his enlightened and statesman-like 
principles of religious toleration from the teaching 
and example of the Massachusetts preachers and 
judges and people who tortured and hung Quakers 
and "witches" and drove Roger Williams, the Baptist, 
into the wilderness among the savages, for maintaining 
that man is responsible to God alone in matters of con- 



1, "Although a youth of only twenty-eight years, he achieved, by his 
consummate tact and extraordinary abilities, what the powerful influence 
of Franklin had failed to effect." — "Men and Times of the Revolution," by 
Elkanah Watson, of Massachusetts (1S56). In the summer of 1781 the New 
England troops, says Hildreth, "exhibited signs of dissatisfaction." The 
fact is they were clamoring for money, and threatening to quit if they 
didn't get it. But the American treasury, adds Hildreth, "was totally 
destitute of monej'. * * * At this critical moment Laurens landed at 
Boston, with a large supply of clothing, arms, and ammmunition, and 
what was still more acceptable, half a million of dollars in cash." The 
disbursement of the "cash" among the New Englanders allayed their "dis- 
satisfaction" and induced them to "stick." 



Some Truths of History. 51 

science, and that no human power has the right to in- 
termeddle in them?^ 

more historic names not in the britannica. 

It was William J. Lowndes, a South Carolinian, 
v/hom the Duke of Argyll and Mr. Roscoe pronounced 
the wisest young man they had ever met, and who was 
declared by Henry Clay to be the wisest man he had 
ever known in Congress ; and yet you might read every 
word in the Britannica without learning that such a 
man as William J. Lowndes ever lived. ^ It was Lang- 
don Cheves, of South Carolina, statesman, jurist, and 
financier, from whom Washington Irving said he had 
for the first time an idea of the manner in which the 
great Greek and Roman orators must have spoken, but 
no word of Cheves do you find in the Britannica. It 
gives space enough to the fights at Lexington and Con- 
cord and Bunker Hill, but dismisses with one line the 
disastrous defeat of the British at Charleston by Moul- 
trie and the brave Carolinians under him, and makes 
no mention of that distinguished soldier nor of Wil- 
liam Jasper, one of the most famous of American 

1. See Addendum B. 

2. In an address on the Fourteenth Congress, Richard Henry Wilde, 
himself a member of that body, alluded to Mr. Lowndes in the following 
language: "Pre-eminent among the members of the Fourteenth Congress 
was a gentleman of South Carolina, now no more, the purest, the calm- 
est, the most philosophical of our country's modern statesmen; one, no 
less remarkable for gentleness of manners and kindness of heart, than for 
that passionless, unclouded intellect, which rendered him deserving of the 
praise, if man ever deserved it, of merely standing by and letting reason 
argue for him; the true patriot, incapable of selfish ambition, who shunned 
office and distinction, yet served his country faithfully, because he loved 
her. He, I mean, who consecrated by his example, the noble precept, so 
entirely his own, that the first station in a Republic was neither to be 
sought after or declined; a sentiment so just and so happily expressed that 
it continues to be repeated because it cannot be improved." 



52 Some Truths of History. 

heroes, for whom counties and towns have been named 
all over the land, and to whose memory bronze and 
marble monuments have been reared. Nor can you 
find anything in it of Gadsden; nor Pickens; nor 
Legare, the distinguished scholar; nor Preston, the 
famous orator; nor Petigru, the great lav/yer; nor 
Robert Barnwell Rhett, the sagacious statesman (suc- 
cessor to Calhoun) ; nor Sims, the great physician, who 
began in Alabama that career which brought him 
world-wide fame, and honors from the crowned heads 
of Europe ; — the only physician and surgeon who ever 
lived possessing a reputation so wbrld-wide that he 
could command a lucrative practice in any capital 
of the civilized world as soon as his arrival was known. 

AN EXCELLENT WORK FOR ANTIQUARIANS. 

It tells US nothing of McDuffie, the statesman and 
splendid orator, but it gives half a column to one 
Maudonius, a deacon who lived in Constantinople 
about 1,500 years ago ; it gives four lines in fine print 
in an obscure foot-note to Rutledge, the patriot, states- 
man, orator and jurist, who was such a potent factor 
in determining the destiny of this great country, and 
over two columns in big print to Claudius Namatianus 
Rutilius, who appears to have written a Latin poem 
about 1,500 years ago; it says nothing of Edmund 
Pendleton, of Virginia, — said by Jefferson to liave 
been the ablest man in debate he ever met, but it de- 
votes over three columns to a painter named Pin- 
turicchio, who lived before Columbus discovered 



Some Truths of History. S3 

America; and it gives so much space to an English 
poet named Drayton, who lived some hundreds of 
years ago, that it has no room for any mention what- 
ever of the celebrated Carolina patriot, statesman and 
jurist of that name. 

It is not to be denied that the Britannica is an excel- 
lent work for antiquarians. 



IV. 



What sort of Cyclopedia for Americans is it that 
finds plenty of room for telling about an English com- 
edy writer named Randolph, who lived about three 
hundred years ago, but no room at all for such states- 
men as Peyton Randolph and Edmund Randolph ; nor 
for George Wythe, the eminent jurist, "the honor of 
his own and the model of future times"; nor for 
George Mason, "a man" — said Thomas Jefferson — 
"of the first order of wisdom among those who acted 
on the theatre of the Revolution"; nor for John 
Henry, first senator from Maryland and colleague of 
Charles Carroll ; nor for any one of the Tuckers, that 
family of scholars, statesmen, jurists and soldiers ; nor 
for Cary, the intrepid patriot; nor for Giles, the ac- 
complished debater and parliamentary tactician; nor 
for Henry Lee, soldier, orator, statesman, — the 
"Light-Horse Harry" of the Revolution, and father 
of the immortal Robert E. Lee; nor George Weedon, 
the Virginian who saved the pariot army at Brandy- 
wine; nor for any of the famous Nicholas family, of 



54 Some Truths of History. 

Virginia, one of whom was commander of Washing- 
ton 's life-guard, governor, and United States senator ; 
nor any of those distinguished families, the Gilmers, 
Bibbs, and Lewises (a statue of one of the last named 
stands on the grounds of the Virginia capitol) ; and 
that makes no mention of that preiix chevalier^ Mira- 
beau B. Lamar? That is just the kind of Cyclopedia 
the Britannica is. It finds room for but two of all 
of the illustrious family of Lee, but you would never 
know, from its sketch of Richard Henry Lee, that he 
was ever President of the Continental Congress of 
America. 

Upon what principle of cyclopedia-making did the 
authors of the Britannica proceed when they gave 
an article over a column long to ''Harvard" College 
and none at all to ''William and Mary," the college 
that gave Washington his first commission and public 
employment and the opportunity for developing his 
genius, — that claims for her children five of the seven 
signers of the Declaration of Independence from Vir- 
ginia, — the college among whose children were "Jef- 
ferson, the author of the Declaration, and Wythe, his 
preceptor ; Peyton Randolph, too, the president of the 
First Congress, and Edmund Randolph, the first At- 
torney-General and Secretary of State and one of the 
wisest of the framers of our Constitution, and James 
Monroe, President of the United States? Then John 
Marshall, the great Chief Justice ; John Tyler, Federal 
judge. Governor of Virginia (and father of another 
of her worthy sons. President Tyler), who instituted 



^ Some Truths of History. 55 

the first measures for the convention to frame our Con- 
stitution in place of that of the Confederation; John 
Taylor, of Caroline ; the Blands, the Pages, the Nich- 
olases, the Burwells, the Grymeses, the Lewises, the 
Lyons, the Mercers, the Cockes, the Boilings, the Nich- 
olsons, and Carringtons, and a long list of others al- 
most as eminent, and quite as worthy, whose names are 
'familiar in our mouths as household words,' were of 
the number she had trained for the service of the coun- 
try prior to the Revolution, to say nothing of the hosts 
of others since that time, trained in her sacred groves, 
who went from her to impress themselves on the socie- 
ty and institutions of the land, as grave and worthy 
judges, eloquent and able advocates, brave warriors on 
land and sea, faithful and honorable men in every 
station."^ Well has it been said of ''William and 
Mary," by the same distinguished speaker whom I 
have just quoted, that "the influence of her sons sent 
out since the Revolution and before the late war, on 
the society and institutions of our country, woula 
alone establish her claims as one of the most glorious, 
successful, and beneficent of the colleges of America. ' ' 

But "William and Mary," the patron of Washing- 
ton, the Alma Mater of Jefferson, and the Randolphs, 
and Monroe, and Marshall, is not deemed worthy of an 
article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

When an intelligent American sees the number and 
sort of foreign subjects to which the Britannica de- 



1. Address of Henry C. Semple to the Society of the Alumni of Wil- 
liam and Mary College, July •ith, 1890. 



56 Some Truths of History. 

votes to much space, how can he help being astonished 
on finding in it no articles on such historic characters 
as Francis Asbury — the first bishop of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church ordained in the United States, to 
whose labors, more than to any other human cause, 
Methodism in America owes its excellent organization 
and wonderful growth; and Thomas Coke; and Jesse 
Lee, of Virginia — whose labors in New England 
earned him the title of the ''Apostle of Methodism"; 
and James 0. Andrew — on whose social relations be- 
gan the division of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
America; and Joshua Soule — that man of giant intel- 
lect and heroic mould, the senior bishop of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church South; and Samuel Harris — 
the "apostle of Virginia," a name to be held in ever- 
lasting remembrance by the Baptist brotherhood ; and 
Samuel Davies — founder of the Presbyterian Church 
in Virginia ; and Moses Stuart — the father of biblical 
learning in America; and John Carroll — the ardent 
and powerful friend of American liberty and the first 
bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the United 
States ; and Archbishop Hughes — that courageous and 
powerful champion of his church; and Bishop Eng- 
land — name especially dear to the people of Charleston 
and South Carolina ; and Alexander Campbell, found- 
er of the church of "The Disciples of Christ"? 
These were colossal figures in the religious life of 
America, but not an article on any one of them is to 
be found in the Britannica. But it gives us swarms 



Some Truths of History. 57 

of English and other foreign preachers and small 
theologians. 

JOHN WESLEY. 

Two statements of the Britannica are so remarkable 
for their display of ignorance and narrow prejudice 
as to deserve a paragraph to themselves right here. 
They are, first, that ''John Wesley was not the author 
of any original hymns," and, second, that "Wesley 
has no claims to rank as a thinker, or even as a theo- 
logian ! ' ' 

That is what the Britannica says of the man of 
whom Macaulay wrote : ' ' He was a man whose elo- 
quent and logical acuteness might have rendered him 
eminent in literature; whose genius for government 
was not inferior to that of Richelieu!" 

ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LINE. 

Why has the Britannica omitted from its pages the 
names of such distinguished Americans as William R. 
King, conspicuous for nearly fifty years in the public 
life of this country, as representative and senator in 
congress, foreign minister and vice-president; and 
Hugh L. White, whose name is so intimately and hon- 
orably associated with many of the most memorable 
events of American history; and John M. Berrien, 
''the Cicero of the American senate;" and William C. 
Rives, senator and foreign minister and author; and 
John Forsyth, senator, foreign minister and secre- 



58 Some Truths of History. 

tary of state ;^ and William Wirt, so distinguished as 
lawyer, orator, and man of letters — for twelve years 
Attorney-General of the United States; and William 
Pinkney, the great lawyer and orator, who was cabinet 
officer, foreign minister and senator; and Reverdy 
Johnson, that other great lawyer, statesman and di- 
plomat; and Stephen Decatur, the most celebrated 
commander of his time in the American navy., whose 
daring and efficiency challenged the attention and 
admiration of the civilized world, and whose tragic 
and untimely death plunged this whole country into 
mourning? The fame of these men is co-extensive 
with the Republic, but not an article on one of them 
is to be found in the Britannica ! Two of them were 
born in that very North Carolina to which the Britan- 
nica specially points in proof of its charge of the bar- 
barism of the South. Why are they all left out of the 
Britannica 's biographical department? Is it because 
they did not hail from Massachusetts — that State 
whose ^'thinkers," says the Britannica, ''outnumber 
all those born south of Mason and Dixon's line since 
the Revolution" — that State, connection with which 
has saved the South ' ' from sinking to the level of Mex- 
ico or the Antilles ' ' ? 

If the author of that unrivaled lyric, "My Life is 
like the Summer Rose," had dwelt in Massachusetts, 
the Britannica would doubtless have contained a notice 

1. By his genius, culture, courteous deportment, and his unrivalled elo- 
quence, even from young manhood, he was a favorite of the people, and 
became the most brilliant light of Jackson's administration. It is probable 
that the State (Georgia) never had a man so variously gifted as Forsj^h. 
— Richard Malcolm Johnston. 



Some Truths of History. 59 

of him, but as he lived in that barbarous region south 
of Mason and Dixon's line, the Britannica knows not 
of him. Yet Richard Henry Wilde was eminent as 
lawyer, orator and statesman, as well as poet. On 
Zachary Taylor it has seventeen lines, but of ''Tape- 
Worms" it has thirteen solid columns, and on "Tre- 
matoda" it is full and thrilling in the extreme, as, for 
instance, where it tells us that ''all Trematoda have 
been commonly regarded as devoid of a body-cavity, 
and as consisting of parenchymatous tissue, but that 
recent researches show that the intercellular spaces in 
this tissue are to be regarded as the homologue of a 
coelom. " This is highly important if true, as the 
papers used to say of news from the front during the 
war, and the clear, intelligible language in which it is 
expressed cannot fail of appreciation by any person 
rejoicing in the possession of the Britannica. It man- 
ages to publish seven columns on Texas w^ithout ever 
telling what city is the capital of the State, and with- 
out any allusion to Moses and Stephen F. Austin, or 
to the Alamo, that American Thermopylae, where 
Bowie, and Crockett, and Travis — Southerners all — 
and their comrades met death and covered themselves 
and the American name with undying glory. If the 
Alamo had been on Massachusetts or English soil, 
would it have been thus totally ignored by the Britan- 
nica? Rather, in that case, would not a few "Tape- 
Worms" and "Trematoda" have been sacrificed, if 
necessary, to make room for some notice of the hun- 
dred and fifty heroes who for ten days held four thou- 



60 Some Truths of History. 

sand foemen at bay, and, like the Old Guard at Water- 
loo, died at last but never surrendered? Room is 
found in the Britannica for a special and separate 
article on ''Concord" and the small skirmish that 
occurred there with little loss of life ; but no such room 
for the Alamo and its devoted band of immortals ; nor 
for King's Mountain; nor Guilford Court-house; nor 
Yorktown, memorable for two sieges, the first of which 
resulted in the capture of an entire British army and 
the achievement of American independence, and the 
last of which occurred during the late war between 
the States, when the Confederate army was besieged 
there by the Union army.'l In such a complete, all- 
round, all-over-the-world, lay-over-everything cyclo- 
pedia as the Britannica claims to be, shouldn't York- 
town have at least as prominent a place as Concord ? 

But I was forgetting that Yorktown, and Guilford 
Court-house, and King's Mountain, and the Alamo, 
like William and Mary College, are on the Britan- 
nica 's barbarous side of Mason and Dixon's line ; while 
Concord, — Concord is in Massachusetts, the Britan- 
nica 's favorite spot of American earth. 

No age nor country ever furnished to the world a 
more gallant and chivalric gentleman — one more 
worthy of the artless homage and undying gratitude 
of all womankind, or an exemplar of manly duty more 
deserving of the profound respect and honor of all 
true-natured men themselves — than that officer of the 
United States navy who, when his ship, with nearly 
600 souls on board, was wrecked in a terrific tornado 



Some Truths of History. 61 

on the Atlantic ocean, took his position on the hurri- 
cane deck of the sinking vessel, dressed in full uni- 
form, and, with a pistol in each hand, enforced his 
emphatic orders that no man should be taken into the 
life-boats until all the women and children were safely 
in them. He saw that every woman and every child 
was saved, and then, consenting to death, went down 
with his ship and the more than 400 other men who 
perished there with him. Angels never looked upon a 
grander sight than that, and 

"I sometimes fancy that, were I king 

Of the princely Knights of the Golden Eing, 
With the song of the minstrel in mine ear, 
And the thrilling story recited here, 
I'd give the best on his bended knee, 
The whitest soul of my chivalry," 

for that heroic son of the Old South — William Lewis 
Herndon, of Virginia — who sank beneath the waves 
that day. He was a commander in the United States 
navy, and explorer of the Amazon. He was a brother- 
in-law of Matthew Fontaine Maury — "the pathfinder 
of the seas," and the father-in-law of Chester A. Ar- 
thur, President of the United States. A monument to 
his memory was erected on the grounds of the United 
States Naval Academy by his brother officers. No hall 
of fame holds nobler name than his. Around that 
name are kindled ''all the kindliest raj^s of all the 
knightliest days," and laurels drenched in pure Par- 
nassian dews should entwine it evermore. But the 
Encyclopedia Britannica takes no note of that name, 



62 Some Truths of History. 

neither does it — but why go on with the long list of 
historic names and places of the South of which the 
Britannica takes no note ? Neither time nor space will 
permit it here, for their name is legion. Has not 
enough been said to show its amazing and culpable 
deficiency in this respect? 



V. 



Is it necessary to add, in further proof of the 
Britannica 's animus towards the South, that, though 
it finds no place in its twenty-four huge volumes for 
William R. King or William L. Yancey, it gives ample 
room to John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison? 
That it puts Webster, Seward and Sumner down as 
"statesmen," and Calhoun and Clay as "politicians," 
merely? That, while it has no article on Jefferson 
Davis, it finds occasion to allude disparagingly to him ? 
That it has no article on the Confederate States, but 
alludes to them incidentally in the article purporting 
to be a history of the United States, and, among many 
other misstatements, says that there were 700,000 sol- 
diers in the Confederate armies at the beginning of 
1863 (while the truth is, they did not have that many 
during the whole period of the war) ? That it says 
that where the Avhites of the Southern States failed to 
gain political control by bribery and threats, they re- 
sorted to whipping and arson and murder? It does 
indeed say these things, and much more in the same 
vein; and discriminates against the South in its biog- 



Some Truths of History. 63 

raphies in the manner stated, all of which no doubt 
greatly delights the Lodges, the Shermans and the 
Chandlers, and those of their ilk, who are so fond of 
describing the South as still being in the twilight of 
civilization — still a land of semi-barbarous people. 
They can quote, you see, the Encyclopedia Britannica 
to prove the justness of their description. The Britan- 
nica is a very popular book in Massachusetts. 

ITS EXPOSITION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

The person who goes to the Encyclopedia Britannica 
for instruction as to the nature of the Government of 
the United States will receive a totally erroneous im- 
pression concerning it. He will read there the dog- 
matic assertion that "it was the people of the whole 
United States" (that is, in the aggregate,) "that 
established the Constitution." This, of course, is a 
wholly untrue and altogether absurd assertion, di- 
rectly in conflict with indisputable public records, and 
plainly disproved by the last clause of the Constitution 
itself, in these words: "The ratification of the con- 
ventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the estab- 
lishment of this Constitution between the States so 
ratifying the same. " "If this were a consolidated gov- 
ernment, ' ' said Henry Lee in the Virginia Convention 
that was considering the question of ratifying the Con- 
stitution, — "If this were a consolidated government, 
ought it not to be ratified by a majority of the people 
as individuals, and not as States? Suppose Virginia, 
Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania had 



/ 
/ 



64 Some Truths of History. 

ratified it; these four States, being a majority of the 
people of America, would, by their adoption,, have 
made it binding on all the States, had this been a 
consolidated government. ' ' 

As it neither was nor could have been established 
by a majority vote of the people of the whole United 
States, so neither can it be changed by a majority 
vote of the people. As it could be established only by 
the votes of nine of the original thirteen States, acting 
as States in convention assembled, so neither can it be 
changed unless three-fourths of the States, through 
their legislatures or conventions, consent that it shall 
be changed. No mere majority vote, either of the 
people or of the States, established or could have es- 
tablished the Constitution. Without the approval and 
ratification of nine of the thirteen States, it would 
have been of no more consequence than the paper on 
which it was written. No mere majority vote, either 
of the people or of the States, can change or amend 
it. A proposed amendment must be approved and rat- 
ified by three-fourths of the States in the manner 
above named before it is of any more consequence than 
the paper on which it is written. 

THE BRITANNICA VERSUS JEFFERSON DAVIS, ALEXANDER 
H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES MADISON. 

If the Britannica's statement were true, the votes 
of a majority of the people in the thirteen States 
would have established the Constitution over all. But 
against that statement let me oppose the words of Jef- 



Some Truths of History. 65 

ferson Davis, an American statesman and historian. 
Mr. Davis says: "The Constitution was never sub- 
mitted to the people of the United States in the aggre- 
gate, or as a people. No such political community as 
the people of the United States exists or ever did exist. 
There has never been any such thing as a vote of 'the 
people of the United States in the aggregate ' ; no such 
people is recognized by the Constitution ; no such po- 
litical community has ever existed. * * * The mon- 
strous fiction that they acted as one people 'in their 
aggregate capacity' has not an atom of fact to serve 
as a basis." {Rise and Fall of the Confederate Gov- 
ernment, vol. 1, chapters 2, 3, and 4.) 

Alexander H. Stephens, another American states- 
man and historian, says : ' ' The Constitution was sub- 
mitted to the States for their approval and ratification, 
and not to the people of the whole country, in the 
aggregate, and it was agreed to and ratified by the 
States as States, and not by the people of all the 
States in one aggregate mass." {The War Between 
the States, vol. 1, Col. 4.) 

James Madison was the fourth President of the 
United States, and is called "the father of the Consti- 
tution" from the fact that it is more his work than 
that of any other one man. Writing of it prior to its 
adoption by the number of States necessary to estab- 
lish it, he said : ' ' That the ratification of the Consti- 
tution will be a federal and not a national act is obvi- 
ous from this single consideration, that it is to result 

(5) 



66 Some Truths of History. 

neither from the decision of a majority of the people 
of the Union nor from that of a majority of the States. 
It must result from the unanimous assent of the sev- 
eral States that are parties to it." {The Federalist, 
xxxix. ) 

Now, where is the truth concerning the Constitution 
and the nature of this Government most likely to be 
found, — in the British Cyclopedia, or in the writings 
of such American statesmen as Davis, Stephens and 
Madison ? 

(In what a different manner from that of the Brit- 
annica is the treatment of this subject by the Interna- 
tional Cyclopedia, a more reliable and much more use- 
ful reference w^ork than the Britannica. The Inter- 
national says : ' ' The independence of each of the sev- 
eral States was acknowledged. ******* 
When the Constitution had been drawn up the diffi- 
culties of its framers had little more than begun. The 
question at once arose, how was the Constitution to 
be put in force ? Congress had no power to grant away 
its own authority to a new government, nor had the 
nation enough confidence in it to accept its decision. 
Accordingly the Convention resolved to lay it before 
the various States. The serious question then arose, 
what was to be done if some States accepted, some 
refused? Finally, it was decided that, if nine States 
accepted it, the Constitution should take effect,, and 
that, if any of the remaining States refused, they must 
be left out of the new confederation. Accordingly 
conventions of the various States were summoned. 



Some Truths of History. 67 

******* On June 21st, 1788, the ninth 
State had ratified the Constitution.") 

THIS IS not a government of a majority of the 

WHOLE PEOPLE. 

The Britannica abounds in statements as mislead- 
ing as the one just so overwekningly refuted, the per- 
nicious purport of them all being that this is a national 
government instead of a ''federal" one, as Mr. Madi- 
son called it ; — that it is a government of the people of 
this country as one nation instead of a federation of 
States; — that it is a government formed and ruled by 
the vote of a majority of the mass — a majority of 
the whole people of the Union. If this were so, — if it 
were true that this is a government of a majority 
of the whole people, Grover Cleveland would now 
be President of the United States, instead of 
Benjamin Harrison, for Cleveland got 100,000 
more votes than Harrison. If it were so, Ruth- 
erford B. Hayes would not have been President, 
for there was a majority of more than 300,000 
against him in the election of 1876. If it were 
so, Abraham Lincoln would not have been President, 
for nearly a million more votes were cast against him 
than were cast for him in the election of 1860. If it 
were so, neither John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, 
nor James Buchanan would have been President, for 
Adams had 50,000 less of the popular vote than Jack- 
son; Taylor had 50,000 less than half the popular 
vote; and Buchanan had 200,000 less than half the 



68 Some Truths of History. 

popular vote. But it is not so. As little as any other 
is this a government of a majority of the mass. 

This disposes of the Britannica's dictum as to the 
Constitution, and its teachings as to the nature of our 
Government, and exposes the fallacy of the saying that 
this is "a government of the people, by the people, for 
the people." The quotations I have given from Davis, 
Stephens, Henry Lee and Madison, and from the 
Constitution itself, as well as the whole history of its 
formation and its daily working, show that this Gov- 
ernment was made by States, of States, for States ; — 
that it is not an empire of provinces, but a federated 
republic, composed of independent States.^ 

VI. 

With its characteristic dogmatism, and true to the 
monarchical spirit that pervades it, the Britannica 
says that Alexander Hamilton was the ablest American 
jurist and statesman. It is not at all surprising to find 
in the Britannica such an estimate as that, of the 
American who called democracy ''a disease." Most 
foreign writers have this opinion of Hamilton, because 
of his anti-Democratic, monarchical tendencies, but, 
per contra, Justice Bradley, of the United States Su- 
preme Court, says: "The opinions of Marshall are 

1. In the case of V/are vs. Hilton (3 Dallas, p. 224), the Supreme Court 
of the United States, Justice Chase delivering the opinion, decided that 
when the Continental Congress declared the Thirteen United Colonies free 
and independent States, it was "a declaration, not that the United Colo- 
nies, jointly, in a collective capacity, were independent States, etc., but 
that each of them was a sovereign and independent State." See Adden- 
dum C. 



Some Truths of History. 69 

the standard authority on constitutional questions. In 
crystalline clear^ess of thought, irrefragable logic, 
and a wide and statesmanlike view of all questions of 
public consequence he has had no superior in this or 
any other country"; and Alexander H. Stephens, in 
his writings, says : ' ' Of all the statesmen in this coun- 
try, none ever excelled Mr. Jefferson in grasp of po- 
litical ideas, and a thorough understanding of the 
principles of human government"; and Prof. John 
Fiske, the accomplished scholar and historian, who 
has made the history of this Government the subject 
of his special study, says that Madison ''was superior 
to Hamilton in sobriety and balance of powers," and 
adds the well known fact that the Government was 
more Madison's work than that of any other one man.^ 
Martin Van Buren — Vice-President and President 
of the United States — who lived in the same day and 
same State with Alexander Hamilton, in his "Inquiry 
Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the 
United States," says: ''Hamilton did more than 
any, and I had almost said than all, his contemporar- 
ies together to counteract the will of the people and 
to subvert by undermining the Constitution of their 
choice. If his sapping and mining policy had been 
finally successful this glorious old Constitution of 
ours would long since have sunk beneath the waters 
of time, an object of neglect and scorn. Our sys- 
tem might then have dissolved in anarchy, or crouched 



1. For a very able, well-written, interesting article on Madison, see the 
International Cyclopedia (1898). 



70 Some Truths of History. 

under despotism or under some milder type of arbi- 
trary government, — a monarchy, an aristocracy, or 
most ignoble of all, a moneyed oligarchy; — but as 
a Republic it would have endured no longer. In this 
aspect, notwithstanding his great and good qualities, 
— and he had many,-^Hamilton's course was an out- 
rage upon liberty and a crime against free govern- 
ment. * * * * The most prominent of his meas- 
ures have been discarded."^ Mr. Van Buren further 
says: "Thomas, Jefferson stands, in my estimation, 
as a faithful republican, pure patriot, and wise and 
accomplished statesman, unequaled in the history of 
man. ' ' 

Here we have the Britannica on one side, and an 
eminent American jurist, two distinguished American 
statesmen, and a learned American author on the 
other. Justice Bradley says Hamilton was not an 
abler jurist than Marshall, Mr. Stephens says he was 
not an abler statesman than Jefferson, Prof. Fiske 
says Madison was his superior in sobriety and balance 
of powers, and Mr. Van Buren says that if his policy 
had succeeded the Republic would have endured no 
longer. Is not this, to say the least of it, calculated 
to shake somewhat the faith of the Britannica worship- 
ers in the infallibility of their big literary fetish? 



1. In the pirated and spurious work published under the title of "The 
Encyclopedia Britannica," by the Werner Company, of Chicago, it is 
stated that the Constitution, as finally adopted, "was drawn up by Alex- 
ander Hamilton"! This is the sort of stuff that passes with many people 
for history. 



Some Truths of History. 71 

did he '^ retire with dignity ''? 

When it comes to American history the Britannica 
seems to have the knack of being found directly op- 
posed by well established facts and the highest Amer- 
ican authorities. Take, for instance, the statement in 
its article on John Adams that "he (Adams) retired 
with dignity to his native place," after his defeat in 
the Presidential election of 1800 ; whereas the truth is 
that he retired in a huff — in a very undignified man- 
ner — so mad that he didn't stay in Washington to see 
the inauguration of his successor, with whom he had 
no intercourse for thirteen years afterward. 

IT GOES WRONG ON '^*'tHE FEDERALIST." 

In its article on American Literature the Britannica 
alludes to "The Federalist" as a newspaper — calling 
it "the organ of the anti-Democratic party"; whereas 
it is well known to those familiar with American liter- 
ature that "The Federalist" is the name of a book 
composed of articles on the Constitution by certain 
distinguished American statesmen. ("Great service 
was done," says The Inter national Cyclopedia, "to 
the cause of the Constitution by a series of essays 
called the Federalist. These were written by Hamil- 
ton, Madison, and a third Federal statesman. Jay." 
It is the most famous American political text book, 
and if the authors of the Britannica had studied it 
properly they would not have displayed such igno- 
rance as they have in regard to this Government. 



,-rv*- 






72 Some Truths of History. 

it blunders about jefferson.* 

In its article on Thomas Jefferson the Britannica 
says that he was the author of the ordinance passed 
by Congress for the government of the North-west 
Territory, containing the provision that there should 
-t^ ^^ be no slavery, after the year 1800, in any State organ- 
\gvif ized from that territory. That is what the Britannica 
says, but the fact is that Thomas Jefferson was not in 
i^_ j^ the United States when that ordinance was passed. He 
A>was residing in Paris as minister to the French court 
at that time (1787), and George Ticknor Curtis, Alex- 
ander H. Stephens, and Daniel Webster, and other 
high American authorities say that Nathan Dane was 
the author of that ordinance. (See Curtis 's Constitu- 
tional History of the United States, vol. I, p. 549; 
Stephens's War Between the States, vol. I, p. 512; 
Webster ^s Works, vol. Ill, p. 263, 8th ed.) Here again 
we have the foreign cyclopedia refuted by distin- 
guished American statesmen and historians. 

IT TELLS WHAT '^LED TO THE WAR OF '61." 

In further reference in the same article to the North- 
west Territory, the Britannica says : "It was the at- 
tempt to organize States from this territory in defiance 
of this restriction (as to slavery) that led to the war 
of 1861. " This is the worst yet. What was called the 
North-west Territory was the territory between the 
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, now comprised in the 
States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wis- 



Some Truths of History. 73 

consin, and part of Minnesota — which, as I have be- 
fore stated, was ceded to the United States by Vir- 
ginia; and it was, according to the Britannica's state- 
ment in its article on Jefferson, the attempt to organ- 
ize these States in violation of law that led to the 
war of 1861 ! This is even worse than the statement 
elsewhere in this same encyclopedia that, during the 
war, the Northern cavalry traversed the Southern 
high roads on bicycles and tricycles!^ Really, the 
Britannica writers should have consulted some of the 
school-boys and girls of Montgomery in the prepara- 
tion of its articles on American history. 

IT MISREPRESENTS TILDEN. 

The Britannica says that Mr. Tilden consented to 
the creation of the electoral commission for deciding 
the disputed result of the presidential election of 1876. 
This is another reminder of the old saying about going 
from home to learn the news. Nobody on this side of 
the Atlantic ever heard Mr. Tilden consent that the 
result of that election should be determined in any 
way not prescribed by the Constitution, but here comes 
a cyclopedia from a foreign land three thousand miles 

1. Commenting on this statement and others of the same character in 
the Britannica, the Atlanta Constitution said: "There is something at- 
tractive about these bold and dashing statements. They pique the reader's 
curiosity. When the stern troopers of Custer and Kilpatrick trundled along 
on their bicycles through Virginia and Georgia it is plain that they must 
have found a better system of country roads than we know anything about. 
This fact alone is sufficiently puzzling, but when we reflect that bicycles 
were not in use until several years after the close of the war, the matter 
assumes a very interesting aspect. How did the federal cavalry get hold 
of bicycles ten years in advance of their fellow-citizens? But we cannot 
pursue the subject. * ♦ * The description of American military meth- 
ods IS as good as anything that Jules Verne has ever written." 



74 Some Truths of History. 

away, with the information that he did so consent. 
Where did the big foreign literary fetish get its infor- 
mation on this point? The fact is that Mr. Tilden 
was opposed to having an electoral commission to de- 
cide the result of that election. 

A lesson in geography. 

The Britannica says : ' ' The Chattahoochee river is 
navigable from Macon to the Gulf of Mexico during 
the greater part of the year." (See article on Colum- 
bus, Georgia. ) Now the fact is that the Chattahoochee 
river is not navigable from Macon during the greater 
part of the year. The fact is that it is not navigable 
from Macon during any part of the year. Indeed, the 
fact is that the Chattahoochee river is not at nor near 
Macon at all. Beyond all question the authors of the 
Britannica made a very great mistake in not consult- 
ing some Alabama or Georgia school-boy or girl in 
the preparation of its articles touching American his- 
tory, geography, etc. If they had done so the Britan- 
nica would certainly have contained something about 
Birmingham, Alabama, and an article on Austin, 
Texas, to say nothing of Brunswick, Georgia. 

^' hamlet'^ without hamlet. 

To write a history of Alabama with no mention of 
Bienville is like playing Hamlet with the part of Ham- 
let left out, and yet this is just what the authors of 
the Britannica have done. The reader of its article 
on Alabama would never learn from that article that 



Some Truths op History. 75 

such a man as Bienville — whose name is so closely 
interwoven with the history of the settlement of this 
great State — ever lived, nor could the reader find in 
that cyclopedia any article on Bienville. He would 
find one, though, on a person by the name of Bilfinger, 
who appears to have been a privy councillor to a duke 
or something of the sort some hundred and fifty years 
ago, and who wrote a treatise entitled " Dilucidationes 
Philosophicse, De Deo, Anima Humana Mundo," etc. 
The Britannica authors evidently didn't think it 
worth while to give space for an article on Bienville, 
the brave soldier and explorer, the settler of States 
and founder of cities ; nor of James Blair, the founder, 
and for fifty years the president of the second college 
in America, but they didn't intend to get left on Bil- 
finger — a duke's privy councillor and the writer of a 
Latin treatise. Never! Perish Bienville; let the 
founder and guiding genius of the Alma Mater of 
statesmen and sages sink into oblivion, but live Bil- 
finger ! 

IT GETS THERE ON ^^ AMPHIBIA. '^ 

But if the Britannica is short on Alabama — to which 
it gives only a page and a half, it "gets there" in 
great shape on "Amphibia," to which it devotes 
twenty-two pages, from which we glean the very inter- 
esting and useful information that "the ganglion of 
the glossopharyngeal nerve appears to coalesce with 
that of the vagus"; and that "the vagus or pneumo- 
gastric, in the perennibranchiate Amphibia, supplies 



^^ ^ __ Some Truths of History. 

(si.. ^=fjw«i^r^'^p'ffcCi|. " ' "■'■ ' ' 

the second and third branchia, and the cucnllaris mus- 
cle." It also gives the highly gratifying assurance 
that "the parietof rentals, nasals, premaxillse, max- 
illag, squamosals, palatines, pterygoids, and parasphe- 
noids, the dentary and angulo-opercular bones, may be 
removed without injury to the chondochranium. ' ' As 
the rest of this extremely entertaining treatise is in 
the same limpid and fascinating style that distin- 
guishes the foregoing extracts, it would be superfluous 
to state that no family should be without the Britanni- 
ca's article on Amphibia. 

AND IT IS SOLID ON ARACHNIDA, MOLLUSCA, ORTHORHO- 

PHA, ETC. 

It is nothing more than fair, too, after all that has 
been said, to add that the Encyclopedia Britannica is 
made up, in very great part, of articles quite similar to 
the one on Amphibia, — that is, similar in respect to 
the absorbing interest of the themes treated, the dia- 
mond-like ludicity of the language in which they are 
couched, and the great practical value — the every-day 
usefulness — to so many people of the information they 
impart. Such, for instance, are its sixty-eight columns 
on Crustacea, its fifty-eight columns on Arachnida, its 
one hundred and sixty-three columns on Infinitesmal 
Calculus, and its long treatises on Mollusca, Orthorho- 
pha, Cyclorhapha, Nematocera, Bibronige, Psychodidse, 
etc. An^i surely there is not one among those who 
possess the Britannica who has not read over and over 
again, and each time with renewing rapture, its hun- 



Some Truths of History. 77 

dred And thirty columns on Ichthyology, abounding 
with such widely interesting and indispensable infor- 
mation as this : ''In the Teleosteous fishes the spinous 
column consists of completely ossified amphicoelous 
vertebrae ; its termination is homocercal. The Polypter- 
oidei have their spinous column formed by distinct 
osseous amphicoelous vertebrae, and is nearly diphy- 
cercal." Clearly, nobody should go a-fishing without 
the Britannica volume with the article on Ichthyology. 
What matters it that this Encyclopedia defames the 
South? And totally ignores many of her greatest 
sons? And makes so many false statements concern- 
ing the history of this country, and is so lacking gen- 
erally in American subjects, and so defective in those 
it does profess to treat ? What matters all this ? Isn't 
it solid on England and things English, you know? 
And on Ichthyology, and the Wave Theory of Light, 
and Hydromechanics, and Ambrosius Theodosius 
Macrobius, and Claudius Namatianus Rutilius— and 
Bilfinger ? 

VII. 

Not only is it true that but for the genius, patriotism 
and valor of Southern men the United States could 
not have won their independence in the War of the 
Revolution,— that the bond which afterwards bound 
the States together in a Federal Union was chiefly 
the creation of Southern statesmanship,— that while 
Northern statesmen and the Northern people wanted 
to barter away to a foreign nation the control of the 



78 Some Truths of History. 

navigation of the Mississippi, and threatened to secede 
from the Union if the barter wasn't made (this was in 
1786), the statesmen and people of the South opposed 
and prevented such a ruinous and disgraceful meas- 
ure, — ^ that the subsequent enlargement of the Union 
to a size twice as great as its original dimensions was 
the achievement of Southern statesmanship and valor, 
— that it was a Southern statesman whose patriotism 
twice saved it from impending dissolution, — not only 
are all these things true, but it is also true that without 
the South 's contribution to the Union cause during 
the war between the States, that cause would have been 
' ' the lost cause. ' ' 

The history of that war shows that many of the 
bravest and most distinguished soldiers and officers of 
the Union army and navy were Southern men. The 
President of the United States during that war was 
a man of Southern birth and lineage, and the presi- 
dent of the convention that nominated him during the 
war was a Southern man. But for Andrew Johnson, 
a Southern man, who was Vice-President under Lin- 
coln, Tennessee would have been lost to the Union, 
and but for Francis P. Blair, a Southern man who was 
a general in the Union army, Missouri would, in all 
likelihood, have joined the Confederacy, and eminent 
Northern authority has said that the peaceful inaugu- 
ration of Mr. Lincoln in 1861 and the safety of Wash- 
ington City then was due to another Southerner — 



1. "I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any 
nation." — Thomas Jefferson. 



Some Truths of History. 79 

General Winfield Scott, who was then the commanding 
general of the United States army. {Eohert C. Win- 
throp to Massachusetts Historical Society, June 14, 
1866.)^ It was General George H. Thomas, of Vir- 
ginia, who stood like a rock between the Union army 
and destruction at Chickamauga,^ and at Chattanooga 
and Mission Ridge dealt the Confederacy blows from 
which it never recovered. The same general had pre- 
viously saved the Union army at Mill Springs and 
Murfreesboro, and shattered Hood's army to pieces at 
Nashville. A distinguished Confederate has said that 
those two Southern men^— Andrew Johnson and 
George H. Thomas — dug the grave of the Confederacy. 
It was General Nelson, a Southern man in the Union 
army, who first came to Grant's relief at Shiloh, and 
saved him from destruction there ; it was Samuel Phil- 
lips Lee, a Southern man in the United States navy, 
who saved Thomas at Nashville by keeping open the 

1. Mr. L. E. Chittenden, who was Register of the United States Treasury 
during the war between the States, has recently published a book entitled 
"Recollections of Mr. Lincoln," in which he says that one of the most 
critical periods in the existence of the Union was the day appointed for 
the official count of the presidential vote of 1S60, which took place in the 
presence of both Houses of Congress on February 13, 1861. Mr. Chittenden 
asserts that this was a moment of imminent danger to the Union, for it 
was, he says, the day appointed for the seizure of Washington and the 
accomplishment of a revolution by armed bodies of men hostile to the inaug- 
uration of Lincoln, and determined upon preventing, in that way, the 
counting of the vote; and he declares that he believed at the time, and has 
never since doubted, that the country was indebted for the peaceful count 
of the electoral vote, for the proclamation of the election of Mr. Lincoln, 
and for the suppression of the revolution projected for that day, to Major- 
General Scott and Vice-President Breckenridge. Commenting on this, the 
New York Sun says: "It is assuredly a curious fact, if fact it be, that two 
men, both Southern born, should, on Feb. 13, 1861, have carried the republic 
safely through one of the most imminent perils that ever threatened its 
existence. ' ' 

2. "His remarkable courage and skillful generalship alone saved the 
whole Federal army from meeting with an overwhelming defeat, and earned 
for him the title of 'The Rock of Chickamauga.' "—The New International 
Cyclopedia. 



80 Some Truths of History. 

Cumberland river for re-inforcements and supplies, 
a service for which he received the thanks of the 
United States Congress; the division commander in 
Sherman's army who stormed the Confederate fortifi- 
cations at Resaca and effected a lodgment, refusing 
to leave the field, though severely wounded, was a Vir- 
ginian; Richard J. Oglesby, colonel, brigadier and 
major-general, severely wounded at Corinth, was of 
Southern birth and ancestry; Newton, a Virginian, 
commanded the first corps of the Union army at 
Gettysburg, and was afterwards chief of engineers of 
the United States army; and we have General Sher- 
man's word for it that "one of the chief causes of 
Lee's surrender was the skillful, hard march, the night 
before, of the troops under General Ord," another 
Southern man in the Union army. The standard work 
on ordnance in the United States army during the 
war between the States was by a Southern man — Laid- 
ley, of Virginia; Lawrence P. Graham, lieutenant- 
colonel, colonel, and brigadier-general, was a Virgin- 
ian; Solomon Meredith, who commanded what was 
known throughout the war as the iron brigade, was 
a North Carolinian; James Duncan Graham, who in 
1865 was superintending engineer of the sea-walls in 
Boston harbor, was a Virginian. Besides those named 
there were many other distinguished soldiers in the 
Union army who were Southern men; and its sur- 
geon-general and judge-advocate-general were South- 
ern men. 

Admiral Farragut, the greatest naval commander 



Some Truths of History. 81 

on the Union side, was a Southern man; so was his 
fleet engineer and his fleet-snrgeon ; a North Carolin- 
ian was his chief-of-staff at New Orleans, and a 
South Carolinian was his chief-of-staff and the com- 
mander of his flag-ship in the battle of Mobile Bay ; 
the ship selected to accompany his flag-ship in 
that battle was commanded by a Southern man, who 
was advanced 30 numbers for gallant conduct in bat- 
tle ; and the commander of the Seminole, another ship 
under Farragut in the same battle, was a Southern 
man. The blockade vessel that captured more prizes 
than any other during the war was commanded by a 
Southerner; a Southerner commanded the monitor 
that captured the Confederate iron-clad in Warsaw 
Sound ; it was a Southern officer in the United States 
navy who, at Pensacola, performed what Admiral 
Porter says was, without doubt, the most gallant 
cutting-out affair that occurred during the war, and 
of whom Mr. Greeley makes special complimentary 
mention in his history, and to whom Mr. Lincoln per- 
sonally expressed his gratitude;^ the commander of 
the iron-clad division of the fleet at the attack on Fort 
Fisher — to whom, more than to any other officer, was 
due the capture of that fort— was a Virginian ; a Geor- 
gian—a commander in Farragut 's fleet, who after- 
wards rose to rear-admiral — received the surrender of 
Fort St. Philip ; a Southerner commanded the Monitor 
in its engagement w ith the Merrimac (or Virginia) 

1. John H. Russell, of Maryland. 
(6) 



82 Some Truths of History. 

and personally fired nearly every shot ; the commander 
of the Western Gulf blockading squadron (and also 
of one of the fleet divisions at New Orleans) was a 
North Carolinian, and a North Carolinian commanded 
the ship that sunk the Alabama, the famous Confed- 
erate vessel commanded by Raphael Semmes. 

Finally, there were in the Union armies more than 
300,000 men from the Southern or slave-holding 
States, exclusive of the more than 200,000 negroes who 
were taken from their Southern owners and mustered 
into the military service of the Union ; — making in all 
more than half a million men the United States Gov- 
ernment had from the South itself with which to fight 
the Confederacy — largely more than half the entire 
number of troops in the Confederate armies. If one- 
half — one-fourth — one-tenth of these had been with 
Sidney Johnston at Shiloh, or with Lee at Sharpsburg 
or Gettysburg there is no room for conjecture as to 
what would have been the result. And so I say that if 
the Northern councils and the Northern armies — for- 
eign cohorts and all — in the war between the States 
had not been re-inforced by Southern brain and 
Southern brawn, the North and not the South would 
have been the vanquished in that war. Of a truth, 
the shaft that quivered in her heart was winged by 
the South herself. 'Twas her own genius that laid 
her low, — that overcame her. 

'^Ah! realm of tombs! but let her bear 

This blazon to the last of times: "^ 

No Nation rose so white and fair, 
Nor fell so pure of crimes. ' ' 



Some Truths of History. 83 

And when the war was over, and the North pre- 
pared a vast and magnificent burial ground at the 
Nation's capital for the soldiers of her armies who 
had fallen in the strife, she paid tribute to Southern 
genius in selecting, out of all the world's literature 
(because in the literature of all the world there is 
nothing better to be found), the poetry of a Southern 
man for inscription over their graves.^ 



And now I must take leave of the Encyclopedia 
Britannica. An enumeration of all its sins of commis- 
sion and omission in its various departments — scien- 
tific as well as historical and literary — would fill a 
volume of itself and require more time than I have at 
my disposal for that purpose. 

My object has been chiefly to vindicate the South 
from its outrageous aspersion, and therefore I have 
not dwelt upon its grave defects in other directions, 
prominent among which is the fact that it contains no 
notice of any living person. History, without our con- 
temporaries, is only half history; and it is simply 
ridiculous to claim completeness as a cyclopedia for a 
work that has not biographies of the very men whose 
deeds, in one form or another, attract the greatest 
amount of general attention, but no biographies are 
to be found in the Britannica of Bismark, ]\Ioltke, 
Gladstone, Kossuth, Huxley, Tyndall, Herbert Spen- 

1. "The Bivouac Of The Dead," by Theodore O'Hara, an officer in the 
Confederate army. 



84 Some Truths of History. 

f 

cer, Tennyson, Edwin Arnold, Swinburne, Bro^raing, 

Castelar, Carnot, Cleveland, Blaine, or any man or 
woman now living an^^where in the world. Comment- 
ing on this omission of these and other prominent char- 
acters. The Nation has aptly said: "To present 
history without them is a task which lies well beyond 
the abilities of the editor-in-chief and his assistant 
corps of editors." A striking instance of this defect 
was brought to my attention recently by a gentleman 
who said that when news came of the death of General 
Joseph E. Johnston he went to his Britannica to obtain 
some particular information about the dead general, 
and failed to find there anything about him. As Gen- 
eral Johnston didn 't die before the publication of that 
volume of the Britannica which treats of names be- 
ginning with the letter "J," no notice of him is in 
that cyclopedia. So, there is no article in it on Bea- 
consfield (D 'Israeli), or Carlyle, or Darwin, or George 
Eliot, or Victor Hugo, or Gambetta, or Garibaldi, or 
Jules Favre, or George Bancroft, or Jefferson Davis, 
or Robert Toombs, or Howell Cobb, or Benjamin H. 
Hill ; or the poets, — Timrod, Hayne, Ryan and Lanier. 
As Margaret J. Preston and James R. Randall — two 
of America's most gifted poets — are still alive, of 
course no information at all about them is to be had 
from the Britannica. 



Some Truths of History. 85 

WHAT HE thought HE WAS GETTING, AND WHAT HE 
REALLY DID GET. 

Of course the gentleman who failed to find in his 
Britannica the information he wanted about General 
Johnston was greatly disappointed, not to say dis- 
gusted. He got the Britannica under the impression 
that he was getting a complete cyclopedia — one that 
was fuller, more thorough, more accurate — one that 
would tell him more about more things and leave less 
to be desired in the way of general information than 
all other cyclopedias combined. The publishers and 
the agent told him it was that kind of a cyclopedia, 
and showed him some remarks to the same 
effect from some English and Northern (prob- 
ably Massachusetts) papers, and he bought it, 
and now finds that — instead of having a really useful 
book of reference, such as is suited to the every-day 
educational needs of American people — he has a col- 
lection of elaborate scientific and technical treatises 
and discussions, philosophical and metaphysical dis- 
quisitions, and abstruse ethical essays, where frequent- 
ly for entire pages the meaning of no two consecutive 
lines can be comprehended hy the average college grad- 
uate, not to say the ordinary reader, and much of 
which is of no more value to the great mass of readers 
than a Chinese almanac would be. Strike out its sur- 
plusage of long, labored treatises, formulas, and use- 
less and unreadable portions, and the Britannica can 
be embraced in less than sixteen volumes. For in- 



86 Some Truths of History. 

stance, in one of its volumes, which contains 856 pages, 
471 of those pages are filled with treatises on nine sub- 
jects. Of course this method of construction renders 
it of little value as a book to be consulted for informa- 
tion about the most of the subjects which are essential 
to the general reader, and for which a cyclopedia is 
most frequently and most profitably consulted. Those 
long treatises do not leave room enough for the sub- 
jects in which the great majority of people are most 
interested. 

As the Britannica devotes no space to living people, 
one would naturally expect to find in it information 
about more of those who are not living than in cyclo- 
pedias that include both. But such is not the case. 
Other cyclopedias not only tell us of the thinkers and 
actors who are making history and shaping the desti- 
nies of nations and States to-day, but they tell us of 
a great many more of the world's distinguished dead 
than the Britannica tells of. 

Another instance of its lack of readily accessible in- 
formation on topics of living interest may be cited in 
the case of the editor of a leading journal who was 
expressing his disappointment at not finding in his 
Britannica any articles on ''The Latin Union," the 
"Monetary Commission of the United States Con- 
gress," the "International Monetary Conference," 
and "Inter State Commerce." The truth is that the 
Britannica is, properly speaking, only a semi-cyclo- 
pedia. 



Some Truths of History. 87 

a glance at its european field. 

It is not within the purview of this writing to follow 
the Britannica into other fields than that which I have 
been specially reviewing; otherwise I should comment 
on the absence from its pages of biographies of such 
historic characters as Berthier, Bertrand, Bessieres, 
Brune, Caulaincourt, Cambronne, Davoust, Duroc, 
Grouchy, Mortier, — those soldiers of the French Re- 
public and of the Empire under the great Napoleon 
who carried the eagles of France in triumph over so 
many battle fields and filled the world with the fame 
of their martial deeds; and the vicomte de Beauhar- 
nais, first husband of the empress Josephine ; and 
Cadoudal, whom Bonaparte could not bribe with place 
or gold ; and Bugeaud ; and Bouille ; and Rochambeau ; 
and Bagration and Kutusow, the great Russian gen- 
erals; and Biron, the Russian duke and regent whose 
career was so remarkable and thrilling ; and the queens 
Brunehaut and Fredegonda, whose rivalries constitute 
a long, bloody and fateful episode in French history; 
and Bernardo del Carpio; and Catalan!; and those 
world-famous heroines, Grace Darling, Florence 
Nightingale, and Flora McDonald; and Agnes Ber- 
nauer, whose unhappy love and pathetic fate plunged 
a country into war ; and Beatrice Portinari ; and Beh- 
ring, the famous navigator (Behring's strait) ; and 
Eric, the Norwegian adventurer; and Praise God 
Barebones; and Jack Cade; and Blondel, the hero of 
one of the most exquisitely romantic stories in litera- 



88 Some Truths of History. 

ture; and Brian Boru (Boroimhe), the Irish hero im- 
mortalized in Tom Moore's words — ''Remember the 
glories of Brian the brave." (We couldn't remember 
them if we depended on the Britannica for the knowl- 
edge of them. ) 

I know it is astounding and almost incredible that, 
in an encyclopedia for which so much is claimed as 
is claimed for the Britannica, there are no articles on 
the characters here named, but it is a fact, neverthe- 
less ; and, after all, is it much stranger than that there 
is in the same cyclopedia no such title as "Thermo- 
pylae," nor "Borodino," nor "Aspern," nor "Ar- 
eola," nor "Campo Formio," nor "Brienne," nor 
"Balaklava," nor — but I cannot follow it through the 
European field. Its defects in that field revealed by 
a cursory glance at the titles under the first few letters 
of the alphabet sufficiently indicate the proportions to 
which the list would grow under closer inspection from 
"A" to "Izzard," and that would involve too wide a 
departure from the purpose of this writing, which is 
to vindicate the South from a great aspersion (as 
I have said) , and to show that the book in which that 
aspersion is published is the last one that an Ameri- 
can should get if what he wants is a book from which 
he call quickly and accurately inform himself on 
American history and geography, American biography 
and literature, and, in short, on all those subjects upon 
which nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a 
thousand are most likely to want inforniation in the 
daily affairs and conversation of life. 



Some Truths of History. 89 

what a cyclopedia should be. 

A cyclopedia, to fill tlie measure of the true signifi- 
cation of the term, should be a dictionary of general 
knowledge, so divided and classified that any desired 
fact or principle can be found with the greatest prac- 
ticable facility, — an epitome of the most valuable 
knowledge, which can be easily consulted, readily 
understood, and promptly applied, without the toil of 
picking out a few grains of available gold from a dis- 
couraging mass of matter written for exclusively sci- 
entific readers, and of the most abstruse scientific char- 
acter. This is just what the Britannica is not. It is 
the very reverse of this, and is therefore of compar- 
atively small value to all except masters in special de- 
partments of science or art, who have both the time 
and the ability to grapple with technical subtleties, 
obscure terminology, and intricate discussions. Its 
publishers, though, in offering it for sale to the Amer- 
ican people, assured them that it would be "thorough 
and accurate in the Geography, History, and Institu- 
tions of America, and an authoritative book of refer- 
ence for English-speaking communities in every quar- 
ter of the globe," and upon the strength of this assur- 
ance they sold thousands of copies of the work 
throughout this country. Do the facts sustain the rep- 
resentation upon which the publishers sold it? Is it 
thorough and accurate on the Geography, History, 
and Institutions of America? If it is not, has not 
fraud been practiced, in the selling of it, by those who 



90 Some Truths of History. 

sold it upon those who bought it because of their faith 
in that representation? 

A GREAT imposition. 

The truth is that the sale of the Encyclopedia Brit- 
annica to the American people as the reference-book 
best suited to their wants is the greatest imposition, 
in the book-selling line, ever practiced upon a people. 
The low price for which it can now be had and the 
attempts at "Americanizing" it are proofs of this 
truth. Long before the last volume of the cumbrous 
work had been delivered to the thousands who had been 
induced to subscribe for it, its worthlessness as a ref- 
erence book for the people was manifest, and it had 
consequently become a drug on the market. Then the 
price began to fall, and kept falling till the Britannica 
could be had for half its former cost, but its inutility 
had by this time become still more widely known, and 
it still remained a drug. 

As a last resort in the strenuous efforts to sell it, 
in one form or another, an ''Americanized Britanni- 
ca" is announced, and the publishers are placing it in 
the offices of newspapers, to be sold at one-fourth of 
the original cost of the Britannica, to every one who 
will at the same time subscribe for the paper that is 
selling it! This is a shrewd device for keeping up a 
fast falling fabric, for of course the papers with which 
this arrangement is made proceed at once to pronounce 
it the best of all cyclopedias. It is ''strictly business" 
with them. Their object is to extend their own circu- 



Some Truths of History. 91 

lation, and as long as they can get a subscriber for 
themselves, and a handsome commission besides, for 
every copy of the Britannica they sell, they will of 
course ''boom" the Britannica. But how are the 
mighty fallen! The much-vaunted "monarch of en- 
cyclopedias," from a hundred and twenty dollars 
down to thirty, and a newspaper thrown in ! Which 
is the chromo, the paper or the Britannica? 

I have not seen the Britannica in this, its latest 
guise, but it is presumably the same old English dish, 
with more American trimmings, but with the same 
venom in it towards the South, — the same venomous 
misrepresentation that has made the world at large 
regard the South as an ignorant, illiterate, semi-bar- 
barous section of the American people, sunk in bru- 
tality and vice, that has contributed nothing to the 
advancement of mankind. If this is the case, — if this 
misrepresentation of the South is perpetuated in the 
so-called Americanized Britannica, then the publish- 
ers of the papers that are engaged in selling it — for 
profit to themselves — to the people of this country, 
should send a copy of this pamphlet along with every 
copy of the cyclopedia they sell, so that the truth 
may go along with the falsehood — the antidote with 
the poison which they are employed in disseminating. 
This much, at least, is due from them to the people 
who are traduced by the Britannica, and into whose 
homes they are placing that work. I would say, how- 
ever, to those who may be so enamored of the title 
"Britannica" that they feel that it is not possible 



92 Some Truths of History. 

for a cyclopedia with any other title to be as good 
as the one which bears that name, that if they will 
wait a while longer before they buy it they will in all 
probability (judging from the rate at which it has 
been falling) be able to get a Britannica at a much 
lower price than the one at which it is now offered. 
So rapid has been its depreciation during the last 
few years that I shall not be surprised to see it going 
for fifteen or twenty dollars, or less, within the next 
year or two. But I trust that the days for duping 
the people of the South into buying the Britannica 
are over. Shall we continue to buy the literature that 
slanders us? Other and better cyclopedias are to be 
had, from sources less ignorant of and less preju- 
diced against this section than those which inspired 
the British v/ork, and to them should our preference 
be given. 

ANGLO-MANIACS. 

There are, as I have said, some who have been im- 
pressed with the belief that in the Britannica they 
have the ne plus ultra of human knowledge. They 
read and are imposed upon by its extraordinary 
claims, gaze upon its big volumes and its pictures, 
are deeply struck with its big-sounding title, and its 
long monographs (which they will never read and 
couldn't understand if they were to read them), and, 
affected, doubtless, with that mental ailment patho- 
logically known as Anglo-mania — the subjects of 
which may be recognized by the extravagant regard 



Some Truths of History. 93 

they have for whatever is ''English, you know" — 
they buy it, set it up, and prostrate themselves before 
it in an attitude of abject intellectual adoration. 
Many of them worship simply its outside — its title, 
and have probably never read half a dozen pages in 
it, and don't know that they have in their libraries 
a book which not only maligns the South, but which 
also 

MAKES WAR ON THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 

to such an extent as to cause the New York Christian 
Advocate to say, — ''The Encyclopedia Britannica is 
pervaded by a spirit of prejudice against evangelical 
Christianity"; and the Christian Intelligencer to say, 
— "We have been asking ourselves, 'Is this encyclo- 
pedia edited in the interest of modern skepticism?' 
We are beginning to ask ourselves, also, whether it 
would not be wise to request to be released from our 
subscription to the work, and whether we might not as 
well subscribe to a new edition of Paine 's Age of 
Reason, revised and enlarged by the most eminent 
skeptics of the day"; and the New Orelans Presby- 
terian to say, — "It is clearly evident that this Ency- 
clopedia is controlled by those who belong not to the 
army of the Defenders of the Faith, but to the host 
which are studiously seeking to undermine its battle- 
ments and to sap the foundations of the Christian 
religion. ' ' Such is the Encyclopedia Britannica from 
the standpoint of the most enlightened Christianity. 
When its publishers realize that they cannot dupe 



94 Some Truths of History. 

the people into buying the ''Americanized Britan- 
nica," perhaps they will then try them with a "Chris- 
tianized Britannica." 

A poisoned fountain. 

If, in what I have written, I have but partially re- 
moved the film that has hidden from the intellectual 
vision of any Britannica worshiper the defects and 
monstrosities of his literary fetish, I have done him 
a service. He should be informed of them, and he 
should keep these papers as, in some sort, a refuta- 
tion of its falsities and an antidote for its teaching. 
Especially should every Southern and Christian pa- 
rent know that, in sending his children to it for in- 
formation about their native land and the religion of 
their fathers, he is sending them to a poisoned foun- 
tain. 



Some Truths of History. 95 



[From The Montgomery Advertiser, March 22, 1891.] 
THE LEES OF VIRGINIA. 



^' LIGHT HORSE HARRY ^^ OF THE REVOLUTION AND HIS 
IMMORTAL SON. 



There was no Belationship Between Them and the Gen- 
eral Lee of the Revolution — Something More About 
General Charles Lee — History for Northern Writers 
and Readers. 



To the Editor of the Advertiser : 

In the Advertiser of the 17th inst., you refer to an 
article going the rounds of the Northern papers head- 
ed, ''General Lee, of the Revolution — A new discov- 
ered manuscript which places him in a bad light — 
He had a contempt for Washington." Commenting 
on this you say that the Northern papers publishing 
the article do not once indicate that there were two 
Lees who were distinguished officers in the American 
army during the Revolution — one, General Charles 
Lee, an Englishman by birth, and an adventurer and 
a soldier of fortune by profession; the other, Henry 
Lee, a Virginian by birth, the commander of Lee's 
legion, the ''Light-Horse Harry" of the Revolution, 
the beloved of Washington, and the father of the im- 
mortal Robert E. Lee. He it was, as you correctly 



96 Some Truths of History. 

say, who first called Washington "the man first in 
war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his coun- 
trymen. ' ' 

I am not surprised at the Northern papers not 
publishing the fact that the Lee referred to in that 
article was not the father of Robert E. Lee — ^was not 
a Virginian — but was Charles Lee, the Englishman. 
It was this same Gen. Charles Lee who was wounded 
in a duel by Col. John Laurens of South Carolina, 
who challenged Lee for language disrespectful to 
"Washington. He was court-martialed and suspended 
from command for disobedience of orders, misbehavior 
before the enemy, and disrespect of the commander- 
in-chief; and was subsequently dismissed from the 
service for writing an impertinent letter to Congress. 
Documentary^ evidence discovered nearly a hundred 
years afterwards shows that he plotted treason against 
the American cause. He was the second officer in 
command in the Revolutionary army, ranking next to 
Washington. He had high talent and literary culture, 
but was extremel}^ eccentric, irascible, vain and boast- 
ful. His inordinate vanity and thirst for distinction 
led him to try to create the impression that he was the 
author of the ''Letters of Junius," and he therefore 
figures in the literature on that subject as one of the 
many to whom the authorship of those celebrated let- 
ters has been attributed, for there were some who, 
for a time, believed that he really did write them. In- 
vestigation showed that there was nothing to sustain 



Some Truths of History. 97 

the claim for him. The facts disclosed wholly dis- 
proved it. 

THE USUAL NORTHERNER'S APPALLING IGNORANCE OF 
AMERICAN HISTORY. 

There was no relationship between Gen. Charles 
Lee and the illustrious Virginia family of the same 
name. I don't suppose that the facts are known to 
the Northern editors who are publishing the article 
in question. No doubt they suppose that the General 
Lee to whom it refers was the Virginian, and the 
father of Robert E. Lee, notwithstanding the fact that 
Henry Lee's rank in the Revolution was that of 
Lieutenant- Colonel, and not General. He did not 
bear the title of General till he was appointed by 
President Washington to command the army sent to 
quell the ''Whisky Insurrection" in Pennsylvania, 
some years after the Revolution. I do not doubt that 
the Northern editors are wholly unaware of these 
facts. The density of the usual Northerner's igno- 
rance of the history of his country is something ap- 
palling.^ 

1. Especially does this ignorance exist with regard to almost everything 
South of Mason's and Dixon's line. In the early part of last year (1902), 
a magazine article by a Northern college professor referred to Charleston 
as the present capital of South Carolina, and a Northern man, in whose 
company I chanced to be thrown for a time — a college man, of much more 
than average intelligence and culture — did not know that the Constitution 
of the United States contained a provision for the rendition of fugitive 
slaves; neither was he aware of the fact that Gen. U. S. Grant was a 
slaveholder, living on the hire of his slaves when the war between the 
States begun. He was a great admirer of Walt Whitman, but of the exquisite 
poetry of Wilde, and Timrod, Ticknor, Lanier and Hayne, he knew noth- 
ing. Indeed, I think he did not know that such men had ever existed. 



(7) 






A^/Mn^ *j^ -^' 



98 Some Truths of History. 

^'gath^' and the boston editor. 

A few years ago the most noted of Northern news- 
paper writers — Mr. George Alfred Townsend, com- 
monly known as ''Gath" — in an elaborate historical 
paper (so-called) in the Boston Glohe, said that it 
was largly through the influence of the writings com- 
prised in the book called "The Federalist" that the 
convention was called that framed the Constitution 
of the United States! And the Boston editor called 
the special attention of his readers to the exceptional 
historical value of Mr. Townsend 's paper, and an- 
nounced that it was to be published in book form for 
the instruction of the New England youths in the 
history of their country ! Think of such ignorance as 
that, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and 
in Boston! 

And it is only a few months since this same noted 
writer, "Gath," in another historical article (so- 
called), said that "the two principal writers of the 
essays called "The Federalist" were John Jay and 
Alexander Hamilton! And yet there are thousands 
of people who read almost daily "Gath's" two, three 
and four column letters, and think, like the Boston 
editor, that they are getting history in doing it.^ 

1. Just as they will think when they read in Schouler's History of the 
United States that Governor George W. Crawford, of Georgia, was a son 
of William H. Crawford, United States Minister to France and Secretary 
of the Treasury in President Monroe's cabinet; and (in the same History) 
that O'Hara's "Bivouac of the Dead" was written after the war between 
the States; and as they think when they read some of Mr. Chauncey M. 
Depew's remarkable contributions to literature in a historical way, — such, 
for instance, as the statement that "every statesman whose name has sur- 
vived the century" (that is, the 18th century) "was for the Jay treaty." 



Some Truths of History. 99 

MRS. Cleveland's good example. 

Verily, it is high time for the formation of clubs 
or societies all over the land for the encouragement 
of the study of American history. Mrs. Cleveland 
and other genuine American women have started a 
movement of that kind among the women of New 
York, and it is an example that should be followed 
in every American city and town. Especially should 
the people of the South welcome and encourage it, 
for no other section has suffered as much as it has 
from the misconception and prejudice resulting from 
ignorance of the history of this country, and no other 
section has so much of glory to gain from the dissem- 
ination of a full and accurate knowledge of that his- 
tory. 

HENRY lee. 

Recurring to the Lees, let me say through the Ad- 
vertiser, for the information of the Northern editors 
who are exulting in the belief that they have found 
something that besmirches the fame of the father of 
Robert E. Lee, that if they will read page 762 of the 
eighth volume of TJie International Cyclopedia they 
will find there these words : 

Henry Lee, a distinguished American general, was 
one of the most daring, vigilant and successful cav- 
alry officers on the side of the colonists. Lee's legion 
was probably the most effective and courageous body 
of troops raised in America. In the famous retreat of 



L.cFC. 



100 Some Truths of History. 

Greene before Cornwallis it formed the rear-giiard, 
the post of honor, and covered itself with glory. At 
the battles of Guilford Court-house and Eutaw, at 
the sieges of Forts Watson, Motte, and Granby and 
Augusta, and at the storming of Fort Grierson, Lee 
particularly signalized himself." 

ROBERT E. LEE. 

Then if the Northern editors will read further in 
the same cyclopedia, they will find there these words : 

"Robert E. Lee, son of the preceding, was com- 
mander-in-chief of the army of the Confederate States 
of America. ***** He defended Richmond 
against the Federal army under McClellan and after 
six days of sanguinary battles drove him to the shelter 
of his gunboats. Marching north, he defeated Gen- 
eral Pope in the second battle of Manassas. Crossing 
the Potomac into Maryland, with a force of 40,000, 
he was met at Antietam by McClellan with 80,000, 
and after a bloody but indecisive conflict recrossed 
the Potomac and took a position at Fredericksburg, 
where he was attacked by General Burnside, whose 
army he defeated with great slaughter. Gen. Hooker, 
the successor of Generals McClellan, Pope and Burn- 
side, whom Lee had successively defeated, crossed the 
Rappahannock May 1st, 1863, and was attacked by 
Gen. Lee, routed with heavy loss and compelled to 
escape in the night across the river." (Some dates 
are omitted here for the sake of space.) 

On page 767 of the same volume, the Northern 



Some Truths of History. 101 

editors, if they will pursue the interesting and truth- 
ful line of historical reading on which I have put 
them, will find these words: ''Gen. Joseph Hooker 
had been appointed to supersede Gen. Burnside, and 
with a powerful army now declared his intention to 
make quick work of ousting the Confederate army 
from Fredericksburg. His army was double in num- 
bers that of Lee. On April 29 he had massed six 
army corps on the north side of the Rappahannock 
near Chancellorsville, and should have chosen his own 
battlefield. The genius of Lee was never more con- 
spicuous than at this time. He took the initiative of 
attack before Hooker's army was through the 'wilder- 
ness,' and detaching Gen. 'Stonewall' Jackson with 
21,000 men to make a long circuit to the rear of the 
right flank of the Union army, he occupied Gen. 
Hooker with menaces in front until the evening of 
the 30th, when Jackson's attack fell like a thunder- 
bolt from a clear sky on the rear of the Union army. 
The next morning the attack was made real in front, 
and such was the paralysis of the Union commanders, 
and such was the mastery of the time and place for 
action on the part of Lee, that the great army of 
Hooker was already defeated. * * * On May 4th 
the whole Union army was in full retreat, completely 
outgeneraled at all points." 

"Lee now organized his army to renew the invasion 
of Pennsylvania. * * * He maneuvered so as to 
force Hooker with all his army to follow, but at the 
same time so attenuated his line as to draw the fol- 



102 Some Truths of History. 

lowing characteristic letter from President Lincoln 
to Gen. Hooker: 'If the head of Lee's army is at 
Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank-road be- 
tween Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the ani- 
mal must be very slim somewhere; could you not 
break him ? ' But Hooker was evidently afraid of Lee 
anywhere, and with reason." Then follows on the 
same page an account of the battle of Gettysburg, 
closing with these words: *'0n the afternoon of the 
3rd (July, 1863), Lee massed 145 cannon and opened 
the battle with their thunder, under cover of which 
his attacking columns were formed. The attack was 
all that human bravery could make it; but the col- 
umn melted before the fire that waited for it; and 
though its head reached and covered the key of the 
struggle, the main force of the column was annihi- 
lated, and the position retaken. Gen. Lee's noble 
equanimity was conspicuous in this defeat in the man- 
ner of his meeting the disorganized remnant of that 
returning column, infusing them with his own serene 
confidence. A retreat was now necessary, but it was 
deliberate and orderly, and Gen. Meade, after his 
victory, found no place in Lee 's army for attack. ' ' 

THEY should READ IT ALL. 

I am sure the Northern editors must, by this time, 
be sufficiently interested in the subject to read the 
conclusion of the International Cyclopedia's article 
on Gen. Lee. Aside from the historical instruction 
they will derive from it, they will find the whole 



Some Truths of History. 103 

article a model of clear cut English, well worth peru- 
sal for the chasteness and vigor of its style. Of 
course only extracts are given from it here. It con- 
cludes as follows: 

''The 'immense campaign' of 1864 for the posses- 
sion of Richmond was now to test and crown the mili- 
tary fame of Gen. Lee. Gen. U. S. Grant, victorious 
thus far on every field, assumed the personal com- 
mand of the army of the Potomac. For an entire 
year all the vast resources at his command were used 
with that rugged grit that regards no loss of life too 
great which achieves the quick end of war, and 
with an energy and skill that all the world acknowl- 
edges. Yet during that entire year Gen. Lee, with 
an army small in comparison, by his engineering 
skill, masterly handling, and invariable readiness, 
held Grant's army at bay, and yielded at last only as 
a cube of steel may yield to the last great pressure 
of a colossal vise. Grant was hammering at the front 
of flint that Lee invariably presented. But the weak- 
ening force could but show their heroic valor and the 
resources of their commander. The last council of 
war of the army of Northern Virginia was held on the 
evening of the 8th of April, 1865, and General Lee 
surrendered the remnant of his troops on the 9th. 
His parting address to his men is a model of sad 
dignity and grateful recognition of an army's con- 
stancy." # * * 

**In person General Lee was of the noblest type of 
manly beauty; tall, broad-shouldered, erect, with a 



104 Some Truths op History. 

dignity as impressive as that of Washington, yet not 
so cold; of habits as pure, more warmly religious; 
with a calm, confident, kindly manner that no disaster 
could change. Wishing every one to remain faithful 
to the old traditions of the South in all that pertained 
to honor, virtue and hospitality, yet he set himself to 
work to root up those animosities and provincial rival- 
ries which led only to ruin." 

Such were the Lees of Virginia whose names head 
this article, — Henry Lee, the father; and Robert E. 
Lee, the son. As they made themselves glorious by 
their deeds, History has made them glorious by her 
words, and they 

*'Are Freedom's now, and Fame's; 
Among the few, the immortal names, 
That were not born to die." 

The South claims them as her own, and proudly 
says of each of them, as a duke of Ormonde said of 
an earl of Ossory, ''I would not exchange my dead 
son for any living son in the world." I commend 
the study of their lives and of our country's history 
to the millions of uninformed and misinformed people 
of the North.^ 

Montgomery, Ala., March, 1891. 



1. When a pirating Boston publisher appropriated the book issued by 
Prof. George Long, of London, entitled "The Thoughts of the Emperor M. 
Aurelius Antoninus," he inserted in his issue a dedication to Gen. Grant, 
who was then President. Prof. Long took a Londoner's view of the piracy 
and dedication and attached a note to the next edition of the work, 
printed in London, in which he said: 

"I might dedicate the book to the successful general who is now the 
President of the United States, with the hope that his integrity and justice 



Some Truths of History. 105 

will restore peace and happiness, so far as he can, to those unhappy States 
which have suffered so much from war and the unrelenting hostility of 
wicked men. But, as the Roman poet said, 'Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed 
victa Catoni;' and if I dedicated this little book to any man I would 
dedicate it to him who led the Confederate armies against the powerful 
invader, and retired from an unequal contest defeated, but not dishonored; 
to the noble Virginian soldier, whose talents and virtues place him by the 
side of the best and wisest man who sat on the throne of the Imperial 
Caesars." 



106 Some Truths of History. 



THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 



What is called the Spanish- American war occurred 
seven years after the foregoing articles were written. 
It was not much of a war, not as many men being 
killed in the entire war, so-called, as were killed in 
any one of many of the small battles of the war between 
the States; and the United States, as a nation, has 
little to boast of in connection with it ; but, such as it 
was, the South — the much maligned, deeply wronged 
South, suffering still and doomed to suffer through 
many long years to come from the ravages of a bitter 
and cruel war of destruction and a yet more bitter 
and heartless war of reconstruction, that left her 
prostrate and bleeding at every pore — was promptly 
at the front, as usual, with more than her quota, 
maintaining her old-time record and precedence in 
deeds of heroism under the very flag that but a little 
while before had waved in triumph over her awful 
agony. That's the South. 

It was Wheeler, of Alabama — Georgian by birth, 
and a lieutenant-general of the Confederate army — 
who, quitting a seat in Congress at the age of 62, 
was among the first to be mustered in as a major- 
general of the volunteer army of the United States 
in the Spanish- American war. Let Northern witnesses 
bear further testimony of him : 



Some Truths of History. 107 

**I am sorry," said Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa, in a 
speech in Congress in January, 1899, ' ' I am sorry that 
I do not see in his seat our old friend from Alabama, 
General Wheeler. I have served with him in this 
House for ten years, a large part of that time sitting 
with him on the same committee, and I have learned 
to look upon the old soldier with a filial affection. 
I did my best to persuade him against going into the 
Cuban campaign. I tried to get him to see that his 
duty was here in the House of Representatives, leav- 
ing to the younger generation the dangers and dis- 
eases of the field and the camp ; but the old man 
said he must go. He weighed only 98 pounds, and 
he said he could ride a horse all day without tiring 
the horse. So he went down there and bore the part 
of a patriot and a soldier. 

**At the time of the attack upon Santiago he was 
sick and unable to leave his tent, but when he heard 
the firing he got into an ambulance and started for 
the front. When he met details of men carrying the 
wounded to the rear he told the boys to let the wound- 
ed ride, and asked them to get him out of the ambu- 
lance and put him upon his horse; and all day long 
on the firing line at Santiago he kept the field, di- 
recting the movement of his troops." 

Said the Puhlic Ledger, of Philadelphia (March 20, 
1899,) : "All observant readers of official and other 
reports on the Santiago campaign will recognize the 
truth of Governor Roosevelt's remark that 'General 
Wheeler was the backbone of the campaign.' " The 



108 Some Truths of History. 

Ledger's remarks had reference to the well known 
fact that General Wheeler persistently opposed the 
retreat of the army that was contemplated by its 
commanding general just before the Santiago fight. 

It was Richmond P. Hobson, of Alabama, who per- 
formed the exploit of which Julian Hawthorne (a 
Northern historian) says: ''On June 3d a deed was 
done which immediately took its place as the most 
daring and brilliant of the war, and one of the most 
heroic ever planned and executed in naval history. * 

"It all seems like a chapter of romance by Steven- 
son or Cooper. ****#**** 

"Was ever fairy tale more wonderful? The mat- 
ter-of-fact, prosaic Nineteenth Century vanishes as we 
read, and the great days of classic heroism are with 
us once more. ******* 

' ' One might almost say that this exploit marked the 
crisis of the war." 

It was Worth Bagley, of North Carolina, who was 
the first officer of the American na^y to fall in that 
war — slain on the deck of his boat by a shell from 
a hidden shore battery whose fire he was daringly 
endeavoring to draw. 

First to shed his blood on Cuban soil was John 
Blair Gibbs, a Virginian, who was a physician in the 
city of New York, with a practice worth $10,000 a 
year, which he gave up to serve as surgeon in the 
navy during the war; and he was the first physician 
in that city to enlist for that war in the medical corps 



Some Truths of History. 109 

of the army or navy, and the first to be accepted as 
a surgeon under President McKinley's first call for 
volunteers. 

It was Arthur L. Willard, of Maryland, who planted 
the first American flag in Cuba; and Thomas M. 
Brumby, of Georgia, who raised the flag over Manila ; 
and Calvin Anderson, a Virginian, who fired the first 
gun on El Caney and the first salute at the surrender 
of Santiago; and the only captain promoted to first 
rank, and to whom this promotion was given for gal- 
lantry on the field, was Micah Jenkins, "a gentle 
and courteous South Carolinian, ' ' wrote his command- 
ing ofiicer, Col. Roosevelt, "on whom danger acted 
like wine." 

As it was a Southerner who performed the most 
heroic exploit on the sea in that war, so were the 
most noted, daring and perilous missions on land exe- 
cuted by Southern men. When the war department 
wanted to send a message, fraught with much moment, 
across the island of Cuba to General Garcia, it was 
Lieutenant Andrew Summers Rowan, a Virginian, 
who was selected for the dangerous and difficult task. 
Through the swamps and underbrush and over the 
mountains of Cuba he carried the message to Garcia, 
brought back the information that was of such ser- 
vice to the American army, and for the skill, courage 
and promptness with which he performed his mission 
he was promoted from lieutenant to lieutenant-col- 
onel. 

When Admiral Sampson was perplexed with doubt, 



110 Some Truths of History. 

uncertain which way to turn, for lack of certain 
knowledge as to the Spanish fleet — knowledge which 
it required a high order of courage and a rare degree 
of coolness to obtain — it was Lieutenant Victor Blue, 
a North Carolinian, whom he dispatched to obtain 
that knowledge, and who obtained it and brought it 
to his commander by going seventy miles alone within 
the enemy's lines, and counting their ships one by 
one as they lay at anchor in Santiago harbor. Death 
as a spy would have been his fate if he had been 
caught, and he knew it. It was this same North 
Carolinian who but a little while before had traversed 
the lines of Spanish gunboats and soldiers to com- 
municate with General Gomez, the Cuban commander- 
in-chief. 

''Admiral Sampson paced his deck, 
With troubled brow and eye. 
While the lights of Santiago flared 
Afar against the sky. 
****** 

''A light came into the Admiral's eye — 
His clouded brow grew free 
As he said to his orderly waiting there — 
' Send Lieutenant Blue to me ! ' 

''In the shadow that night a little craft 
Slipped off from the flagship's side. 
And, turning, steered for the Cuban shore. 
Borne in on the Cuban tide — 

' ' And Victor Blue was there alone. 
Serene and well content — 



Some Truths of History. Ill 

Eejoiced at heart to be off again 
On the Spanish fox's scent. 



"Victor Blue! What a name it is 
For a deed of old renown — 
How it stirs the blood, how the fancy wakes 
And brushes the cobwebs down! 

"Why, you see the flag, its stars and stripes, 
You hear the bugles play, 
And you know some deed of desperate need 
Has come to blaze the way ! ' ' 

Yes, it was to Hobson, of Alabama, and Blue, of 
North Carolina — Southerners and sons of Confederate 
soldiers — that the admiral turned for *' deeds of des- 
perate need ' ' ; and when the shock of battle came be- 
tween the opposing fleets, it was the Southerner, Win- 
field Scott Schley, who commanded the American ships 
in the action that resulted in the greatest victory of 
the war. 

When it was thought that it w^ould be necessary to 
send an armored squadron to the coast of Spain, a 
Southern man — John Crittenden Watson, grandson 
of the illustrious Southern statesman, John J. Crit- 
tenden — was selected for its commander; and a 
Southern man — Elwell S. Otis — was made command- 
er-in-chief of the American forces in the Philippines. 
The Inspector-General of the army was Joseph C. 
Breckinridge, another Southerner, who took the field 
as major-general of volunteers and whose horse was 
shot under him before Santiago ; nor should it be for- 



112 Some Truths of History. 

gotten that the man who occupied the position of consul 
at Havana in the trying days preceding the outbreak 
of hostilities, and guarded the interests of the United 
States with unfaltering patriotism and unfailing 
judgment, was Fitzhugh Lee, of Virginia, a general 
of the Confederate army, who, on the termination of 
his consulship, tendered his services as a soldier, and 
was mustered into the volunteer army as a major- 
general just before General Wheeler was. 

The first of the major-generals of volunteers mus- 
tered in at the outbreak of the war was a Southern 
man, and of the other ten mustered in on the same 
occasion four were Southern, four Northern, and one 
was Irish; and among the brigadier-generals was 
another Southerner in the person of General William 
C. Gates, — a colonel in the Confederate army, who 
was wounded six times and lost his right arm in the 
war between the States, and who — like Wheeler and 
like Hobson — was from Alabama. 

That's the South — thus was she illustrated — in the 
Spanish- American war. What of New England ? Let 
a Northern witness answ^er. Said the Milwaukee Sen- 
tinel: "The scare in New England over the chances 
of a Spanish raid on her coasts is about the most ab- 
surd thing developed in the war. There is not now 
and has not been the least sign that such a thing is 
possible. The Spanish fleet has enough to do without 
getting so far from support. The coast is regularly 
patrolled and communication cannot be interrupted. 
Yet that coast seems to be frightened out of its wits. 



Some Truths of History. 113 

It behaved in just that way in 1812 when there was 
really some danger. Yet what did it amount to ? Not 
a raid; yet they refused to furnish their quota for 
fear something would happen. This time the quota 
will be furnished, but in raw recruits; the National 
guard stays at home. * * * Do they imagine that 
there will be an invasion? The Southern coast is 
much more exposed and more defenceless, yet we never 
hear a word from them about fear of attack. They 
send on the best men they have, promptly. The con- 
trast is not to the advantage of the East." 

What a difference it would make if the contributions 
of Southern thought in the fields of statesmanship, 
of science and invention, and the achievements of 
Southern enterprise and action were stricken from 
the pages of American history! 



(8) 



114 Some Truths of History. 



[From The New YorTc Tribune, June 16, 1898.] 

AMERICAN DEEDS OF DARING. 



THE CONFEDERATES GLASSELL AND DIXON COMPARED 
WITH GUSHING AND HOBSON. 



To The Editor of The Tribune. 

Sir: It is a mistake to suppose that Lieutenant 
Gushing 's attack on the Albemarle is the only deed 
in American naval annals worthy of comparison with 
Lieutenant Hobson's daring action at Santiago. 

The year before Gushing 's attack on the Albemarle, 
Gommander W. T. Glassell, of the Confederate States 
navy, made a similar attack on the New Ironsides, of 
the blockading fleet off Charleston harbor. Gushing 's 
attack was made in a steam launch, equipped with a 
torpedo and a brass howitzer. His crew consisted of 
thirteen officers and men, most of whom were captured, 
but he escaped. 

Glassell's attack was made in a steam launch, 
equipped with a torpedo and manned by himself, an 
engineer, a pilot and a fireman. Not as fortunate 
as Gushing, his approach was discovered, and he was 
hailed by the lookout, but he steered straight on for 
the Ironsides till he struck her. A terrific fire was 
at once opened on him, his little boat was covered 
with the immense volume of water thrown up by the 



Some Truths of History. 115 

explosion, and its engine was made unmanageable by 
falling timber, and there "was nothing left for him 
but to swim for life and liberty. He did not escape, 
and his daring act was not as completely successful 
as it might have been had his approach not been dis- 
covered as soon as it was. 

The Ironsides escaped destruction by the narrowest 
margin, being made useless for a long time by the 
terrible and well-nigh fatal blow she had received. 
She was doubtless a stronger, more powerful ship than 
the Confederacy, with its limited resources, had been 
able to make of the Albemarle, and was the pride of 
the blockading fleet, which, at the time of Glassell's 
attack, numbered thirteen large ships and ironclads, 
with more than a score of other vessels. 

It was against the monarch of that powerful fleet 
that Glassell and his three comrades drove their little 
boat on the night of October 5, 1863. Shall not their 
names go on the scroll of fame along with Hobson's 
and Gushing 's? 

And then let not those who are recounting patriotic 
deeds of devoted daring forget the story of the sub- 
marine boat — the only one of its character that won 
a record during the war between the States — con- 
structed by the Confederates for the purpose of at- 
tacking and destroying the ships of the Federal fleet 
then blockading the Southern harbor. Her crew con- 
sisted of nine men. Three trials made with her re- 
sulted in the death of twenty-three men who had 
undertaken the desperate work for which she was 



116 Some Truths op History. 

designed. Then Lieutenant^ Dixon, of the Confederate 
States navy, with a fourth crew, stepped into the 
places made vacant by the death of those who had 
preceded them, and the boat sailed out of the harbor, 
attacked and sunk the Housatonic, and disappeared 
forever with her crew, every man of which was a 
volunteer, as was every one of those who had gone 
to death before them in that little boat. 

Now, while the world is ringing with praise of the 
gallant young Alabamian and the comrades he led 
in his glorious exploit under the Stars and Stripes, 
w^ill the New York TiHhune admit to its columns this 
brief recital of heroism under the Stars and Bars ? 






Some Truths of History. 117 



WORDS OF WINTHROP AND CALHOUN. 



The case of the South against the Encyclopedia 
Britannica and all others of her maligners might 
safely be rested on the statement of facts made in the 
foregoing pages, but I wish to add to them some words 
of two of America's wisest and purest statesmen and 
patriots, — one from the North, one from the South. 
In the encyclopedia published by the Werner Com- 
pany, of Chicago, which has been widely advertised 
in the newspapers as a fac-simile of the Britannica, 
(but which is not the fac-simile it is advertised to be), 
and is now in many Southern homes, the people of 
the South are represented as having degenerated, and 
fallen far behind the people of the North in civiliza- 
tion, in moral sense, and in the spirit of enterprise; 
and as being always on the aggressive and always in 
the wrong in the differences with the North. (Vol. 
23, pp. 771 & 775, par. 240 & 256.) The statements 
thus made in that encyclopedia come of course from 
a Northern source, and in reply to it I introduce here 
another statement from another and a far higher 
Northern source. 

In a speech in Boston, in 1860, on the presidential 
election of that year, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop,^ 
of Massachusetts, said: 

1. Representative in Congress, Speaker of the House, United States 
Senator, and for thirty years President of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society. 



118 Some Truths of History. 

*' National liarmony can never be restored by the 
triumph of either of the extreme parties, whether of 
the North or of the South. Certainly, it cannot be 
restored by the triumph of a party which has wholly 
refused to recognize the Southern States in the selec- 
tion of their candidates, and which does not pretend 
to rely upon or to anticipate a single electoral vote 
from any one of those States. Certainly it cannot be 
restored by the triumph of a party, at least one of 
whose candidates is so identified with those who would 
award the holiest crown of martyrdom to the very 
instigator and organizer of insurrection and treason, 
and so many of whose organs and orators are daily 
denouncing the South as a land of barbarism, and 
daily exulting in the proclamation of an irreconcilable 
and irrepressible conflict between the slave States and 
the free States. It would be madness to expect from 
such a triumph anything but renewed agitation, re- 
newed irritation, renewed outbreaks of fanaticism 
at one end of the Union and fury at the other, which 
no patriot and no Christian can contemplate without 
a shudder. * * * I rejoice that I am here in season 
to give a vote which shall virtually and practically 
say, ' ' That man of blood, and treason, and massacre,^ 
was not right. The men of the South are not barbar- 
ians, to be reviled and defied, but our brethren, with 
whom we delight to dwell, and mean to dwell, in 
unity. And there is no conflict between the free 
States and the slave States which moderation, and 

1. Jolin Brown. 



Some Truths of History. 119 

reason, and justice, and patriotism cannot repress, 
and ought not to repress, at once and forever.' " 

Such were the words of one of the purest and wis- 
est statesmen and patriots this country ever had,— 
one whose counsels, like the counsels of that other 
great man, Daniel Webster, were ever on the side of 
"moderation, and reason, and justice, and patriot- 
ism." Had they been heeded, how different from 
what it was would this country's past have been, how 
different all its future from what it will be. Had 
they been heeded, the history of the five years fol- 
lowing 1860 would not have been written in blood, 
and the Union and Republic of the fathers of 1776 
would still be in existence. But the North turned its 
back, in coarse, fanatical revilings, upon Webster and 
upon Winthrop— the statesmen and patriots, to fol- 
low in the wake of men who preached "blood, and 
treason, and massacre," and the Union and Republic 
established by the Revolutionary patriots ceased to 

exist. 

In further reply to that encyclopedia's defamatory 
statements about the South I quote her own great 
statesman, John C. Calhoun, in the following words: 

"When did the South ever place her hand on the 
North? When did she ever interfere with her pecu- 
liar institutions? When did she ever aim a blow at 
her peace and security? When did she ever demand 
more than naked, sheer justice of the Union? Never! 
never ! And can we reverse these questions and have 
the same response from the North?" * * * The 



120 Some Truths of History. 

Southern people are not degenerated. They have 
kept up with their brethren in other sections where 
slavery does not exist. It is odious to make compari- 
sons, but I appeal to all States whether the South is 
not equal in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage, 
disinterestedness, and all the higher qualities which 
adorn our nature." 

The truths of history told in these pages affirm 
Mr. Calhoun's emphatic denial as to the charge of 
wanton aggressiveness made against the South, and 
very clearly indicate the answer to his earnest appeal. 
I think that no reader of these truths can be at a loss 
to decide whether "the higher qualities which adorn 
our nature" have found better illustration in the 
Northern or the Southern type of civilization, as ex- 
emplified by the most conspicuously and widely ac- 
credited representatives of each, in civil or military 
life, as well as by the peoples, at large, of the two 
sections. 



Some Truths of History. 121 



AN ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE HISTORICAL COMMITTEE OF THE UNITED CON- 
FEDERATE VETERANS, AT BIRMINGHAM, 
ALA., APRIL 24, 1894. 



[This address was published in the New Orleans Times- 
Democrat, and in part in the Eichmond (Va.) Dispatch and the 
Baltimore Sun.'] 

Gentlemen of the Historical Committee: 

There is now being extensively circulated in the 
South a book which contains these statements: 

* * The moral sense of the Southern people and their 
spirit of enterprise had been blighted by the curse 
of slavery. Labor was held to be degrading, and 
those who carried on the few branches of industry 
were considered an inferior caste." 

''The South (in 1856) demanded a renewal of the 
African slave trade, and the nefarious practice was 
opened on an extensive scale, with but little attempt 
at concealment. During 1857 twenty-two vessels en- 
gaged in this business were captured by the British 
fleet watching the African coast, and every vessel but 
one of these was American." 

"In the Senate chamber Charles Sumner had been 
stricken to the floor with a bludgeon and nearly mur- 
dered by Brooks, in the presence of several Southern 



122 Some Truths op History. 

Senators, for daring to criticise the unjust and one- 
sided proceedings of the border ruffians in Kansas." 

"Since the Revolutionary days the few thinkers of 
America born south of Mason and Dixon's line are 
outnumbered by those belonging to the single State 
of Massachusetts, nor is it too much to say that mainly 
by their connection with the North the Carolinas 
have been saved from sinking to the level of Mexico 
or the Antilles." 

These are a few specimen statements from the pages 
of an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in part, 
(published by the "Werner Company, of Chicago) now 
being sold to the Southern people (especially in the 
State of Texas, where I have recently been), and the 
most unpleasant — the most regrettable feature of the 
business is that the sale is being effected through 
the instrumentality of Southern newspapers, which, 
in their own names, are commending that book as 
being absolutely reliable authority on all subjects, and 
are urging Southern parents to buy it for their chil- 
dren. 

Now, when the parents, thus urged, buy the book; 
and their children, thus assured by their home papers 
of its absolute reliability, go to it for information as 
to the history of their country and find these state- 
ments, will not the inevitable final effect of such teach- 
ing be to make them ashamed of their lineage ? Their 
home paper tells them that the book is the absolute, 
final authority on all subjects, and on the strength 



Some Truths of History. 123 

of that recommendation the book is bought for them. 
They must believe the book or disbelieve the paper. 

How are those children, when* they read in that 
book about the blighting of the spirit of enterprise 
in the South, how are they to know the fact that the 
magnificence of the American Union is due to the 
spirit and enterprise and the martial daring of 
Southern men? How are they to know the falseness 
of the statement that the South 's moral sense was 
blighted? When they read the statement about the 
slave trade, how are they to know the fact that every 
one of the American vessels referred to as being en- 
gaged in that trade was built in a Northern port and 
armed and manned by Northern men, and that the 
negroes with which they were filled on the African 
coast were carried chiefly to Brazil and other foreign 
countries? How are they to know the fact that from 
August, 1842, to the winter of 1858, there was but one 
importation of slaves into the Southern States, and 
that the vessel which brought that cargo was made 
by Northern hands with Northern wood, fitted out 
in one Northern port, and cleared from another North- 
ern port; that the captain was a Northern man who 
was afterward an officer in the Northern army in the 
late war, and that all but one of the men who went 
with him to Africa on the slave hunt were Northern 
men ? How are they to know the fact that the Consti- 
tution of the United States, made by both Northern 
and Southern men, did not prohibit the slave trade, 
while the Constitution of the Confederate States, made 



124 Some Truths of History. 

by Southern men only, did positively and uncondi- 
tionally prohibit that trade? How are they to know 
the fact that in the convention that framed the Con- 
stitution of the United States more Northern States 
voted in favor of the slave trade than Southern 
States? How are they to know that one of the rea- 
sons given in the Declaration of Independence for 
the dissolving of the political bands that connected 
the colonies with Great Britain was the fact that the 
King of Great Britain had incited insurrection 
among the slaves in the colonies, and yet that the 
people of the North afterwards systematically engaged 
in the inciting of insurrection among the slaves in the 
South, and that when one of the Northern emissaries 
thus engaged was caught in the act, tried and convict- 
ed, and hang according to law, he was glorified and 
canonized in the North, where it was said that he had 
made the gallows as glorious as the cross? How are 
they to know that far the greatest horrors attending 
African slavery were the horrors of "the middle pas- 
sage," the horrors perpetrated by Northern men in 
the vessels in which they packed the negroes in bring- 
ing them across the ocean from Africa ? How are the 
children who are told by this book that their ances- 
tors were civilized by the Northern people — how are 
they to know the fact that those ancestors, through 
that very institution called slavery, as it existed in the 
South, did more for civilization than was ever done 
in the same length of time by any other people who 
ever lived in all the tide of time? For they gave 



Some Truths of History. 125 

civilization and Christianity to a race of savages and 
cannibals. 

When a Southern youth reads in this book the 
statement that the first sentence of the Constitution 
of the United States "is not a preamble in any sense, 
but is the enacting clause, an integral part of the 
Constitution, stating that it was the people of the 
whole United States who established it;" how is he 
to know the falseness and utter absurdity of the 
statement? How is he to know why that preamble 
was worded just as it is? Upon correct information 
upon that point depends the correct comprehension 
of the nature of the government formed by the Con- 
stitution, but neither that information nor informa- 
tion of any of the other facts I have named is to be 
gained from the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

What sort of an idea of the South 's greatest states- 
man will be formed in the mind of the youth who 
reads, in the book that he is taught to look upon as 
"absolute authority," the statement that "Calhoun 
never ceased his plotting?" What visions of dark 
and traitorous machinations are presented to the mind 
in these words! How different they are from the 
words spoken of that great man by his great political 
opponent, Daniel Webster, who said, ' ' There was noth- 
ing groveling, or low, or meanly selfish that came near 
the head or the heart of IMr. Calhoun. ' ' 

And when a Southern youth reads in this "absolute- 
ly reliable" book that a Southern Congressman at- 
tacked with a bludgeon and nearly murdered a North- 



126 Some Truths of History. 

ern Senator, in the Senate Chamber, simply because 
that Senator had "dared to criticise the unjust and 
one-sided proceedings of border ruffians in Kansas," 
how is he to know that this is a total distortion of the 
facts, or escape being forced to the conclusion that he 
is indeed descended from a breed of ruffians ? 

It was one of the quotations I have given from this 
encyclopedia that was cited by Mr. Thomas Nelson 
Page in an address at Roanoke, Va., nearly two years 
ago, as the most impressive proof of the need for the 
South to awake and be doing in the matter of having 
herself truthfully represented in history. It is indeed 
time for the survivors of the generation that is passing 
away to be looking to the books from whose pages their 
children are taught. It is indeed time for them to be 
encouraging with all their might the writing and the 
circulation of books that represent them truthfully, if 
they wish to be respected by the generation coming 
after. 

Surely, the publishers of the Southern newspapers 
to which I have referred would not,, for the sake of a 
few paltry dollars, knowingly enlist those papers in 
the work of circulating a book that slanders and villi- 
fies the South. Surely, when they are made aware of 
the fact that they are engaged in circulating such a 
book, they will not permit themselves longer to be used 
for such a purpose. 

Our Northern neighbors know the power of books. 
They know that Voltaire said truly when he said that 
all the world, except savage nations, is governed by 



Some Truths of History. 127 

books. Hence, as they sent army after army from 
their inexhaustible human hives to overcome the South 
on the battle-field, so they are now sending book after 
book from their multitudinous presses to overcome 
her in the mental arena — to educate her children to 
believe that they are the children of parents whose 
moral sense was blighted and who to-day would be 
in a condition of semi-barbarism but for the civiliz- 
ing influence of the North. 

Shall we be mentally subjugated ? Shall the North- 
ern idea become the Southern idea? Shall they tri- 
umph in the intellectual as well as in the physical 
forum ? If yea, complete, indeed, would then be their 
triumph; complete, indeed, would then be our over- 
throw, our humiliation, our degradation. The South 
yielded in the contest with the sword, but not until 
after a struggle against overwhelming odds that ex- 
cited the wonder and admiration of the world. Shall 
we now, without a struggle worthy of the name, sur- 
render that mightier weapon, the pen ? To answer this 
momentous question, or rather, to avert such a catas- 
trophe, is, as I understand it, one of the objects of this 
organization of Confederate veterans. They, the fast- 
fading remnant of that army which for four long 
years filled the world with the fame of its heroic deeds, 
and which surrendered not until it was annihilated — 
they, who are proud to be numbered among those who 
followed that glorious chieftain whose sword was 
sheathed and whose heart was broken at Appomattox 
— they are here, as I understand it, to urge their 



128 Some Truths op History. 

fellow-countrymen to see to it that there shall be no 
Appomattox for the Southern pen, and no instruction 
of Southern youth as to the history of this country 
from sources which tell them that they are the descend- 
ants of ancestors bereft of moral sense and all spirit of 
enterprise ; ancestors who held labor to be degrading, 
who were ruffians, conspirators and traitors, and who 
were saved from barbarism mainly by the civilizing 
influence exerted upon them by the people of the 
North. 

Gentlemen, is it true, as has been alleged, that there 
has been a decadence in the spirit of our people, that 
there is a less strong feeling of the sanctity of both 
public and private obligations, a less firm devotion to 
principle as principle than there used to be ? That the 
corner-lot principle, the wild booming of towns and 
hastening to be rich is destroying the true spirit of 
our race? Is it to this corner-lot principle that we 
must attribute the wild booming by Southern papers 
of a book that traduces the fathers from whose loins 
we sprung and the mothers who gave us birth ? In the 
words of one of the truest sons of the South, I ask — 
"Are the Southern people prepared, are they pre- 
paring to surrender their past? To surrender the 
'Old South' as it stands in the truth of history, and 
to accept a new South that shall deny, or adulterate, 
or mutilate it?'' 

Mr. Chairman, of that "Old South" I am not com- 
petent, from personal knowledge, to speak in fitting 
terms. It was given to me to have but one brief 



Some Truths of History. 129 

glimpse of it before it passed away forever, like the 
enchanting vision of childhood's joyous dream. But 
there came, erstwhile, to the city of Atlanta, one who 
knew that Old South well, because he was part and 
parcel of it; one w^ho, though on his head there rests 
a crown as white as Hecla's snow, bears yet within 
his soul the fires of patriotism that glow like Hecla's 
flame, and whose tongue is attuned to notes of sur- 
passing eloquence.^ He came from his home in that 
other Georgian city — the beautiful "Forest City" — 
to tell the young men of Atlanta of that Old South 
which, he said, though it is so much misunderstood, so 
greatly maligned, so much belied, must forever remain, 
for those who knew it best, the golden age of Amer- 
ican history ; and I accept, with all my heart, his tes- 
timony that ' ' the stern glory of Sparta, the rich beauty 
of Athens, the splendors of imperial Rome, the bril- 
liancy of ancient Carthage, all pale before the glories 
of the Old South, the sunny South of our forefathers, 
of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, and last, 
but not least, of Lee"; and his avowal that, let the 
truth of history prevail, and each youth who first 
sees the light in this sunny clime will, wherever his 
wanderings may have carried him, proudly exclaim : 
' * Thank God, I belong to the blood and lineage of the 
South!" 

1. Gen. Henry R. Jackson. 



(9) 



130 Some Truths of History. 



[From The Times-Democrat (New Orleans), July 2, 1895.] 
THE ''ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNIC A" 



''as published by the WERNER COMPANY, OF CHICAGO/' 
CONFEDERATE VETERANS DENOUNCE IT AND REFUSE 
TO ALLOW IT TO REMAIN IN THEIR HALL. 



Last night at the Memorial Hall the Cavalry Asso- 
ciation Camp No. 9 held a regular monthly meeting, 
with President G. H. Tichenor in the chair. In the 
absence of the secretary, Mr. Charles H. Bailey acted. 

The meeting was opened with prayer by Chaplain 
Purser. ***** rpj^^ following report upon 
the Encyclopedia Britannica was adopted : 

To the President and Members of Camp No. 9, U. C. 
V. Cavalry Association: 

Comrades — Your committee appointed to investi- 
gate the charges against the Peale reprint of the En- 
cyclopedia Britannica, published by the Werner Com- 
pany, of Chicago, beg leave to report: 

1. That the chief object of the United Confederate 
Veteran Association, and of all Confederate associa- 
tions since 1865, is to gather together and preserve 
the material for a true and fair history of the South- 
ern States, and their soldiers, statesmen and people, 
and especially of the causes of the civil war of 1861- 
1865, and the conduct of that war: and to denoimce 



Some Truths of History. 131 

all books and publications which traduce the Southern 
States, and belie or belittle their achievements, and 
which are unfair and unjust to the people. 

We have personally examined the R. S. Peale re- 
print of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published and 
sold by the ''Werner Company," of Chicago. It is 
not a fac simile of the ninth edition of the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica of Edinburgh and revised to date. 
The Edinburgh edition (the ninth) was unfair and 
unjust to the South, and the writers and editors were 
ignorant of the facts of history and of the lives, writ- 
ings and character of Southern soldiers, statesmen, 
poets, novelists and historians. They apparently 
thought that the whole of the intellectual, moral and 
patriotic life of the United States had its centre in 
New England, and was somewhat diffused through 
the North. But the editors of the R. S. Peale re- 
print, published and sold by the Werner Company, 
of Chicago, in having a number of articles rewritten 
— notably the one on the United States — have been 
much more offensive to the South than was the orig- 
inal Edinburgh edition. The publishers have been ex- 
tensively advertising and selling in the South what 
they claim to be a specially revised edition, in which 
justice is done to the South. We find that a few of 
the most offensive paragraphs have been cut out and 
substitute pages pasted in the volumes sold in the 
South, a copy of which pasted volume is in Memorial 
Hall, and for which the Cavalry Association, without 



132 Some Truths of History. 

examination, and on the representation of the agent 
of the Werner Company, passed a vote of thanks. 

Simply as samples of the tone of this work, as sold 
in the North, shown by copies of the same and later 
date than those sold here, unfair and unjust to the 
South, we submit a few extracts: 

(Here followed a number of passages from the work 
showing its unfair and slanderous character.) 

The Dick Dowling Camp, in June, 1894, passed the 
following resolutions, and after a careful examination 
of the Peale reprint we concur: 

' ' Headquarters Dick Dowling Camp, No. 197, 
*' United Confederate Veterans, 
''Houston, Tex., July 1, 1894. 
' ' Comrades — At a recent meeting of the Dick Dow- 
ling Camp of United Confederate Veterans, of this 
city, the following resolutions were unanimously 
adopted : 

' ' Whereas, the members of the Dick Dowling Camp 
of the United Confederate Veterans, here assembled, 
do most heartily subscribe to the words of our great 
captain, Robert E. Lee, that 'every one should do all 
in his power to collect and disseminate the truth (as 
to the war between the States) in the hope that it 
may find a place in history and descend to posterity.' 
''And whereas, one of the objects of the organi- 
zation of the body known as the United Confederate 
Veterans was to see to it, so far as in their power 
lay, that those words shall be faithfully carried out, 



Some Truths of History. 133 

to the end that history shall transmit to posterity a 
truthful representation of the South and a true ac- 
count of the war between the States, such an account 
as shall show that the South, to quote again the words 
of Lee, 'had no other object than the defense of those 
principles of American liberty upon which the Consti- 
tutions of the several States were originally founded ; ' 

"And whereas, a Northern publishing firm, styled 
the Werner Company, of Chicago, is now circulating 
an edition of the R. S. Peale reprint of the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica that falsifies history by stigmatizing 
the people of the South as being a people deficient 
in civilization and moral sense, and untrue to their 
obligations under the Constitution, by charging them 
with having brought on the war in violation of those 
principles, the defense of which the illustrious Lee 
declared was his and the South 's only object; there- 
fore 

' ' Resolved, That we hereby condemn as utterly false, 
slanderous and misleading the statements of the ency- 
clopedia alluded to, which show unmistakable evi- 
dence of having been inspired by a combination of 
malice and ignorance, and we would impress upon all 
who want the truth concerning American history the 
necessity of seeking it elsewhere than in the pages 
of that encyclopedia. Especially do we urge Southern 
parents not to point their children to it for that truth. 

** Resolved further, That the camps throughout the 
South be requested to take proper action in this mat- 
ter, and the Southern press generally be requested 



134 Some Truths of History. 

to lend its aid in suppressing falsehood and dissem- 
inating the truth, either by publishing the foregoing, 
or in such other way as will most effectively accom- 
plish the desired end." 

The historical committee, of which that distin- 
guished soldier and educator, Lieut. Gen. Stephen D. 
Lee, is chairman, reported adversely to the integrity, 
accuracy and good faith of the Southern revision of 
the Peale reprint of the Werner Company's cyclo- 
pedia, and the report was adopted by the United Con- 
federate Veterans at Houston. "We indorse and ap- 
prove this action. Gen. Stephen D. Lee and his com- 
mittee deserve the thanks of all Southern men for 
their disinterested labors in this behalf. We there- 
fore recommend the following resolutions: 

"Resolved by Camp No. 9, U. C. V. Cavalry Asso- 
ciation, That the report of its committee on the Peale 
reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published by 
the Werner Company, and especially as to its special 
Southern pasted edition, be approved and adopted as 
the sense of this Association. 

* ' Resolved, That we rescind and withdraw our reso- 
lution of thanks for the copy of that encyclopedia 
presented to the camps in New Orleans, and deposited 
in Memorial Hall. 

''Resolved, That copies of this report and these 
resolutions be furnished to the press and to the other 
camps of the U. C. V. in New Orleans, and they be 



Some Truths of History. 135 

requested to unite with us in returning the volumes 
of that encyclopedia in Memorial Hall to the donors." 

J. A. Harral^ 
John S. Moore, 

B. R. FORMAN, 5'jx. . 

D. I. Purser, 
H. W. Spear, 
W. H. Wright, 
T. W. Castleman. 



136 Some Truths of History. 



[From The Times-Democrat (New Orleans), July 10, 1895.] 

AN INTERESTING SPEECH 



BY JUDGE MONROE^ OF THE LOUISL\NA SUPREME COURT. 



Last night at the Memorial Hall a very interesting 
meeting of the Army of Tennessee was held. * * 

Under the head of new business Judge Monroe 
offered a set of resolutions denouncing the "Ency- 
clopedia Britannica, " a set of which was presented to 
the camp. At the time the books were given the 
Association accepted them and tendered the donor a 
vote of thanks before investigating them. Since re- 
ceiving them, however, it has become known that there 
were several passages slanderous to the South, and 
after investigating them thoroughly Judge Monroe 
said that he would offer a resolution, which he thought 
should be adopted, returning the books to the donor. 
He said that he thought it would be better to wait 
until next meeting, so that more members would be 
present when action on so important a matter 
would be taken. 

On motion it was decided that the historical com- 
mittee be instructed to investigate the books, and to 
report at the next meeting, when no doubt the reso- 
lutions offered by Judge Monroe will be adopted. 

Judge Monroe made a very interesting speech, in 



Some Truths of History. 137 

which he pointed out the errors made by this book, 
and showed why the people of the South should not 
encourage the publication. 



138 Some Truths of History. 

[From The Picayune (New Orleans), August 14, 1895.] 
A FORCIBLE AND ELOQUENT PAPER. 



THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD MUST BE GUARDED BY T^HE 
LIVING AND THEIR MEMORY SHIELDED FROM UN- 
JUST ASPERSION. 



There was an interesting meeting of the Army of 
Tennessee last night, Colonel W. E. Huger presiding 
and Secretary Nicholas Cuny in charge of the docu- 
ments. ***** 

There was considerable interest taken in the reading 
of the report of the historical committee. This was 
with reference to publications that have appeared and 
which were condemned by a resolution of Judge Mon- 
roe. The committee recommended that the resolution 
offered by Comrade Monroe be adopted. Following is 
the resolution, which met the unanimous approval of 
the attendance: 

Whereas, at a meeting of this association, held upon 
the 9th day of April, 1895, a publication known as 
the '^Peale" reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
published by the Werner Company, of Chicago, was 
tendered as a gift to the Confederate associations 
holding their meetings in this hall ; and 

Whereas, this association was included among those 
referred to in said tender, and concurred in receiv- 



Some Truths of History. 139 

ing the books offered, and in returning thanks there- 
for; and 

Whereas, said action was taken by this association 
without previous examination of the books so ten- 
dered and received, and without adequate knowledge 
of their contents ; and 

Whereas, said publication is intended to be used 
for purposes of daily reference and instruction 
throughout the civilized world, and will, doubtless, 
serve as a source from which many persons not other- 
wise familiar with the history of the United States 
and with the political and social conditions existing 
in said States, will seek information; and 

Whereas, the obligation of the writers contributing 
to said publication, and of the publishers thereof, with 
respect to the truthfulness, accuracy and impartial- 
ity of the matter therein contained, and especially 
with respect to such matter, historical, political and 
ethical, as deals with the motives, actions and charac- 
ter of a people who rank among the most enlightened 
of the age, is at least commensurate with the poten- 
tiality of said publication for the dissemination of 
error and prejudice ; and 

Whereas, said obligation has not been discharged 
insofar as the matter contained in said publication 
deals with the relations existing, and which have here- 
tofore existed, between the Southern States, and be- 
tween the people of the South, and the other States 
and people of the American Union, but, on the con- 
trary, has been distinctly disregarded, inasmuch as 



140 Some Truths of History. 

said matter is based largely upon absolute untruth 
with respect to prominent and important facts of 
American history, and is stained and colored by per- 
version and prejudice, to the detriment and injury 
of the people of the South, as a moral, religious, en- 
lightened and Constitution-loving people ; and to the 
prejudice of the soldiers of the South with respect 
to the motives which led them to participate in the 
great civil war which desolated their homes; and 

Whereas, it is one of the purposes of this associa- 
tion to guard the bivouac of the dead, and to shield 
the memory of those who can no longer protect them- 
selves from unjust aspersions as to their motives in 
laying down their lives upon their native soil; and it 
is also the purpose of this association to encourage the 
dissemination of truth, rather than falsehood, with re- 
spect to the position of the people of the South, before, 
during and since the late war, in order that our chil- 
dren, at least,, and future historians, may do that 
justice which fanaticism and sectionalism has denied; 
and 

Whereas, it is inconsistent with these purposes for 
us, after being informed of the contents, to accept as 
a gift and return thanks for the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica, as published by the Werner Company, of Chi- 
cago; therefore. 

Be it resolved, by Camp No. 2, United Confederate 
Veterans, Association of the Army of Tennessee, That 
the resolution heretofore adopted accepting said En- 



Some Truths of History. 141 

cyclopedia Britannica as a gift, and returning thanks 
therefor, be and the same is hereby rescinded. 

Be it further resolved, That the secretary be in- 
structed to notify the donors that, insofar as this asso- 
ciation is concerned, said publication awaits their 
pleasure. 

Be it further resolved, That we unite with Camp 
No. 9, U. C. V. Cavalry Association, in inviting other 
camps interested to take similar action. 

After adoption. Comrade Chas. Santana offered the 
following in connection with the preceding resolution, 
and it was adopted by a full rising vote: 

Resolved, That the Association of the Army of 
Tennessee, Louisiana Division, United Confederate 
Veterans, take this occasion to express their sense of 
the great service rendered to the people of the South 
and to the cause of the truth of history by the pains- 
taking, conscientious, patriotic manner in which Gen- 
eral Stephen D. Lee and his associates on the United 
Confederate Veterans' historical committee performed 
the important duty with which they were charged in 
the preparation of the report submitted by them to 
the late convention at Houston. The report espe- 
cially warned our people against the dissemination of 
books that traduce the South and malign the character 
of her illustrious leaders, and named the so-called R. 
S. Peale reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica (now 
published by the Werner Company, of Chicago) as 
a flagrant example of that kind of literature. The 
committee's utterance on this subject was timely and 



142 Some Truths of History. 

much needed, and it will doubtless do more than any 
other utterance since the war towards checking the 
dissemination of such literature and securing fair 
treatment of the South — a fair statement of the facts 
of history — in future editions of encyclopedias. A 
fair statement, a true statement, with nothing extenu- 
ated nor aught set down in malice, is all the South 
asks ; all she needs to stand acquitted before the judg- 
ment bar of history of the charges against her civili- 
zation and her patriotism, and we would urge that 
the Southern press, as well as our comrade camps 
throughout the South, actively and earnestly co-oper- 
ate with our historical committee in preventing the 
dissemination of books that make those charges. 



Some Truths of History. 143 



A STRIKING CONTRAST. 



The following quotations are taken from The Inter- 
national Cyclopedia (published by Dodd, Mead & Co., 
New York), and inserted here to show the difference 
between history as written in a fair, impartial, un- 
prejudiced, enlightened spirit; and so-called history, 
written in exactly the contrary spirit — such as is dis- 
played by the so-called Encyclopedia Britannica. The 
contrast is striking, and greatly to the credit of the 
International. Treating of the crisis of 1860- '61, that 
cyclopedia says : 

"President Buchanan's administration witnessed 
the culmination of the conflict that had for years 
been waged between the free and the slave States in 
the political arena. The elements of disorder, of dis- 
sension, of enmity, and of hate, that seemed seething 
in the mind of the extremists of both sections, were 
now concentrated in the prelude to a still greater and 
more tremendous conflict. It was during this admin- 
istration that the leaders of the South appear to have 
definitely decided that the welfare of their section 
could not be satisfactorily conserved while the South- 
ern States remained a part of the Federal Union. It 
must be remembered that ever since the foundation 
of the government, the statesmen of the South had 
consistently maintained that theory of the Federal 



144 Some Truths of History. 

Constitution which regarded the ultimate sovereignty 
as resting not in the nation as a whole, but rather 
in the individual States themselves, which this theory 
held to be supreme and independent commonwealths. 
According to the view prevalent at the South, these 
sovereign States had entered into a league of union 
with the other States for purposes of mutual advan- 
tage; and this partnership, like others, was to endure 
only so long as its original purpose was maintained 
with regard to all the States. Events seemed now to 
indicate that the time for the dissolution of the com- 
pact had arrived. In the first place, the balance of 
political power was passing rapidly into the hands 
of a party inimical to the interests of the South, a 
party pledged to the ultimate abolition of slavery, 
and to a commercial system of protection which was 
peculiarly unfavorable to an agricultural community 
such as the South then was. Regarding slavery, it 
is unfair to represent the South as, in the abstract, 
devoted to a servile system. The greatest statesmen 
of that section had always deplored the presence of 
the slaves as an economic and social injury, yet, in- 
asmuch as slavery actually existed, the question was 
a practical one rather than a matter of speculative 
interest. Unmolested and unsupported by the foreign 
slave-trade it is likely that the gradual extinction of 
slavery would have been brought about through nat- 
ural causes. But at this time the ill-judged zeal of 
Northern extremists had begun a crusade which, con- 
ducted with extreme bitterness and violence of denun- 



Some Truths of History. 145 

elation, produced a most unfortunate effect. The 
sensitive and high-spirited people of the South heard 
with amazement the most indiscriminate abuse heaped 
upon them, because there existed among them an insti- 
tution originally planted there largely through the 
instrumentality of the New England slave dealers and 
Northern traders. They heard the purest and most 
kindly of their leaders attacked in language that would 
have been harsh if applied to branded criminals. It 
is not remarkable, therefore, that this ill-judged vitu- 
peration led them to sink all their minor differences 
of opinion and united them in defiant resistance to 
such wholesale onslaught. Men who believed thor- 
oughly in the abstract wrongfulness of slavery, indig- 
nantly rushed to its defense when the attack upon 
it took the form of an attack upon everything that 
the South revered. The Constitution itself distinctly 
recognized the existence of slavery, and the propa- 
ganda of the Abolition party began to be accompanied 
by open denunciations of that instrument of govern- 
ment. It therefore appeared to the South that politi- 
cal peace with the Northern States was likely to be 
best attained by separation." 

On the subject of slavery, The International fur- 
ther says: *'At the period of the organization of the 
National government the feeling of distaste for the 
institution of domestic slavery was strong in the 
Southern States themselves, and prevailed throughout 
the Union, though certain ship-owners of Boston and 

ao) 



146 Some Truths of History. 

other parts of New England found it to their interest 
to foster a state of things which was to them greatly 
remunerative. They supplied the slave-ships which 
transported the Africans from the points of depart- 
ure on the west coast of Africa, and grew rich in the 
traffic. * * * rjy^Q Southern States had from 
the beginning found slaves more profitable to them 
than they could have ever possibly been in the North, 
and this fact alone had been sufficient to occasion the 
gradual centralization of the institution within the 
boundaries of those States." 

Of the antagonism that grew up between the sec- 
tions, it says : ' ' The old antagonism between puritan 
and cavalier ; between manufacturing and commercial 
interests; between a Northern and a Southern people, 
was now laid upon the shoulders of the institution 
of slavery." 

The statements in the foregoing extracts will meet 
with the approval of fair-minded, truth-loving read- 
ers, and might well serve as models for all cyclopedia 
writers. 



Some Truths of History. 147 



[Eeprinted from the New Orleans Times-Democrat.'] 
GREG'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



I have read the recent editorials in The Times- 
Democrat relative to obtaining "a history of the 
United States that will do justice to the Southern 
States," in one of which editorials it is truly said: 
''The most important parts of such history will, of 
course, be those giving the causes which led up to the 
late civil war, the war itself, and events occurring 
since then." The Times-Democrat declares that it 
does not expect a history that will contain no defects 
nor imperfections — that will be exact beyond all criti- 
cism (for it believes the making of such a book to be 
impossible), but it urges the necessity of a history to 
go forth to meet the many sectional and partisan books 
issued from the North, which are crystalizing public 
opinion, and would have, not ' ' a lifeless, dry and sta- 
tistical history, but one that will be interesting, one 
that will be read ; one that will tend to check the false 
stories which are being sent out in so many Northern 
books; one that will tell the world the truth in such 
a way as to interest and convince." 

I have read also the ably written article of " S. R. " 
on the same subject, in The Times-Democrat of the 
12th instant, in which it is correctly stated that the 
misconception has obtained, not only in European 



148 Some Truths of History. 

countries, but through the Northwest and the East, 
that the struggle on the part of the South was inaug- 
urated to maintain her system of slavery. "S. R." 
says truly that slavery was but a side issue in the 
divergence of political views and creeds which caused 
the attempt made to withdraw from the Union, and 
strongly emphasizes the need of a history ''showing 
plainly and with a broad fearlessness what were the 
great issues which gradually grew upon the American 
people and forced the culmination of the war between 
the sections." 

I desire to bring to the notice of the people of New 
Orleans, of Louisiana, and of the South generally, a 
history that, more than any other yet published, meets 
the need above stated. 

More powerfully than anything else that has yet 
been penned does this history "meet the many sec- 
tional and partisan books issued from the North," 
which have so long been ' ' crystalizing public opinion. ' ' 
More plainly and with a "broader fearlessness" than 
any other publication yet given to the world does it 
show "what were the great issues which gradually 
grew upon the American people and forced the cul- 
mination of the war between the sections." More 
triumphantly than any other history yet written does 
it vindicate the righteousness of the cause for which 
Lee and Beauregard fought, for which Sidney John- 
ston and Stonewall Jackson died, and for which Jef- 
ferson Davis wore iron manacles. More splendid, 
more eloquent, more impressive than is to be found 



Some Truths of History. 149 

in any other pages is the tribute it pays to the valor 
and patriotic devotion of the men who, in that cause, 
stood firm where banners waved, and followed where 
those chieftans led, and to the civilization that pro- 
duced such men. And the fact that this book comes 
from a wholly non-sectional source — from a writer who 
is neither of the North nor of the South — from a for- 
eigner 3,000 miles away, with no political nor partisan 
interests to serve by it — will make it more effective 
in removing the misconception that has obtained about 
that cause and in ''checking the false stories being 
sent out in so many Northern books," than any book 
of Southern authorship could be, because the latter, 
however truthful in its statements, would still be 
weakened by the suspicion, if not the fact, of sectional 
prejudice on the part of its author. 

Greg's history of the united states 

was written by Mr. Percy Greg, an Englishman of 
distinguished literary ability, who visited this country 
and spent some time in observing and studying its 
peoples and institutions. It is the scholarly life-work 
of a man peculiarly fitted for his task, a man uniting 
the higher qualities of diplomat and soldier, economist 
and political philosopher — calm in judgment, keen in 
intellect, graceful in style, logical in form, comprehen- 
sive in grasp, lucid and strong in statement, learned 
in the lore of the past, with sympathies broad enough 
to embrace the world, and imagination vivid enough 
to vitalize philosophic thought. 



ISO Some Truths of History. 

The treatment of his theme embraces what he calls 
the three central events of American history — the 
Revolution, the Constitution, and the Civil War. He 
writes of the Revolution from the standpoint of an 
Englishman who does not see that all the reason and 
all the right were on the whig and American side 
during that period, and all the error and all the wrong 
on the English side, and he therefore comes into con- 
flict with opinions long since fixed in American minds 
by the sources from which our earliest information 
and impressions have been derived. For instance, 
while he recognizes and pays tribute to the high per- 
sonal character of Washington and the virtues that 
entitle him to the praise of mankind, he yet holds that 
the American commander was not a faultless being, 
and censures him severely for the hanging of Major 
Andre and for other acts and measures "which his 
personal or patriotic passions led him to commit or 
acquiesce in." He thinks that Jefferson, ''in his 
dread of strong government," went so far in the oppo- 
site direction as to profess opinions anarchical in 
their tendency. In these, and in some of Jefferson's 
acts — such, for instance, as the "receiving of the 
British minister in a narrow lobby, in slippers, and 
in slovenly dress ' ' — he sees what he thinks are the arts 
of the demagogue (using that word in its commonly 
accepted sense). We view these things from an oppo- 
site standpoint. We see them in a different light. 
We have been taught to regard the Revolutionary 
leaders as being too far superior to other mortals to 



Some Truths of History. 151 

be influenced by the passions, the faults and failings 
common to the humanity of our day. It comes upon 
us in the nature of a shock to read the heretical ex- 
pressions of this bold and brilliant Englishman con- 
cerning men whom we have been accustomed to look 
upon as the demigods of our race ; but, as Gen. Wade 
Hampton very truly says, "while we may not in all 
cases concur with the author's conclusions, we cannot 
fiil to admit the force with which he states them 
aid the fairness with which he gives the authorities 
upn which they are based." On this point Mr. 
Gi3g himself says: ''Of my comments and deduc- 
tions the reader must judge. I hope that I have 
funished him with sufficient material for an inde- 
p en lent judgment, so far as space and scope allowed. 
I have given, in general, not the authorities on which 
I htve most relied, but those most accessible, and, 
abo\e all, those which, as the reluctant admissions 
of hostile witnesses, are finally conclusive." 

I vould that space permitted me to give here some 
extrajts from that part of the work under consider- 
ation which most nearly concerns the people of the 
Soutl — the part which treats of "the causes which 
led u) to the late war, the war itself, and events oc- 
curriig since then." To what has already been said 
on tkt point let it be sufficient to add that we have 
in ths book not the "lifeless, dry and statistical 
histoiy" deprecated by The Times-Democrat^ but one 
that iepicts the story of that war with a dramati(5 
powe* that stirs the blood, and vindicates the moral 



152 Some Truths of History. 

and constitutional rightfulness of our dead and bur- 
ied cause with argument unanswerable and with a 
majestic strength that will command for all time to 
come the admiring attention of mankind. 

Greg^s History of the United States was first pub- 
lished in England six years ago. The fact that it 
has not till now been brought to the knowledge an^ 
placed within reach of the American people is exf 
plained by the statement that a wealthy New En^f- 
lander bought up all the copies he could get th^ 
found their way to this country and withdrew the/n 
from circulation, and no Northern house would re- 
publish or keep it. But "truth crushed to earth Tfill 
rise again," and Greg's history, destined to immor- 
tality, was rescued from the oblivion in which fin- 
friendly and malignant hands would bury it. Not- 
withstanding the attempted suppression, Prof. ])ab- 
ney, professor of history in the University of Vir- 
ginia, after long and persistent effort, finally Suc- 
ceeded in getting hold of a few copies, and ai his 
instance a Southern house has published an American 
edition, to which Gen. Wade Hampton has writt^ an 
introduction. 

GEN. HAMPTON SAYS: 

' ' The American publishers of this remarkable tvork 
have conferred a benefit upon the reading pubic of 
this country by placing it within the reach a all 
thoughtful students of American history who cesire 
to learn the truth unobscured by sectionalism orpar- 



Some Truths of History. 153 

tisanship. * * * -p^ ^^le Southern people the 
book is of inestimable value, for it contains not only 
a vindication of the South, but it bears noble testi- 
mony to the devotion, the patriotism and the heroism 
of its citizens. * * * It is fortunate for us 
that a disinterested foreign writer of established repu- 
tation has come to our rescue, vindicating alike our 
cause and our conduct, as this work of Greg has done, 
fully and conclusively. * * * Every true man 
in the South who followed the starry cross in its 
brief but glorious career ; every one who feels a pride 
in the achievements of our Southland in the past, or 
who wishes to see our people vindicated, should read 
Greg's History of the United States.'' 

Such is the book that, in the fulness of time, has 
come to us from the land of Shakespeare and Milton 
— the land of Havelock and Nelson, of Hampden, Pym 
and Sidney. 

Such is the book of which Prof. Dabney, in a letter 
now before me, says: 

''Let us hope that many thousands of copies may 
soon be distributed through our well-beloved and 
much-maligned Southland. ' ' 

Breathes there a son or a daughter of that South- 
land with soul so dead as not to share this hope? I 
need not ask if the words of that true and loyal Vir- 
ginian and Southerner do not strike a responsive 
chord in the heart of every survivor of those fast 



154 Some Truths of History. 

thinning ranks in gray who followed that Conquered 
Banner, whose fame, in this book's glowing pages, 
*' shall go sounding down the ages." 
New Orleans, March 24, 1893. 



Some Truths of History. 155 



[Eeprinted from the Magazine of American History, 
June, 1889.] 

GEORGIA AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



The recent centennial anniversary of the meeting 
of the first Congress and the inauguration of the first 
President of the Union under the Constitution fills 
the thoughtful mind with interesting reflections and 
reminiscences touching that immortal instrument. 

When the men who framed it met in convention 
in Philadelphia, in May, 1787, one of them — James 
Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence 
— said : ' ' When I consider the amazing extent of the 
country, the immense population which is to fill it, 
the influence which the government we are to form 
will have, not only on the present generation of our 
people and their multiplied posterity, but on the whole 
globe, I am lost in the magnitude of the object." 
''In the closing hours of the convention," says Mr. 
Bancroft, "the members were awe-struck at the re- 
sult of their councils; the Constitution was a nobler 
work than any one of them believed possible to de- 
vise; and Washington, at an early hour in the even- 
ing, retired to meditate on the momentous work which 
had been executed." Fifty years later De Tocque- 
ville, the French statesman, and the most eminent 
political writer of the century, said: "This Con- 



156 Some Truths of History. 

stitution rests upon a wholly novel theory, which may 
be considered as a great discovery in modern political 
science." Lord Brougham declared it to be "the very 
greatest refinement in social policy to which any 
state of circumstances has ever given rise, or to which 
any age has ever given birth;" and a hundred years 
after its creation, Gladstone, the greatest living states- 
man of England, said : ' ' The American Constitution 
is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given 
time by the brain and purpose of man." 

It is to Georgia's potential agency in giving life 
to and shaping that Constitution that I would now 
call attention. 

Perhaps the most important and impressive episode 
in the State's career recalled by the historical retro- 
spect induced by the occasion is the one that is now 
least generally known; and yet, at the time of its 
occurrence, it absorbed the attention of the entire Un- 
ion, for in its issue was involved the preservation of 
that State sovereignty without which the Union 
could not have had existence nor been perpetuated. 
It was in the year 1792, just five years after the for- 
mation of the Constitution, and a little more than three 
years after it went into operation, when "Washington 
was President, and Edward Telfair was Governor of 
Georgia, that a suit was brought in the United States 
Supreme Court against the State of Georgia by a 
citizen of South Carolina named Chisholm, for a sum 
of money alleged to be due him from the State. The 
State, through her official agents, the Governor and 



Some Truths of History. 157 

Attorney-General, was duly notified of the suit, and 
served with summons to appear before the court and 
make answer to the claim against her. Taking the 
position that a sovereign State, which she claimed to 
be, could not, by the Federal Constitution, be sued 
by a citizen of another State, Georgia refused to obey 
the summons. Whereupon the Attorney-General of 
the United States, as counsel for the plaintiff, moved 
that, unless Georgia appeared at the next term of 
court, judgment should be entered against her by 
default, and a writ of inquiry of damages awarded. 
Due notice was given to the State of this motion, the 
consideration of which, however, was postponed by 
the court till the next term, that the State might 
have time to deliberate on the course she would take. 
Georgia paid no more attention to this notice than she 
had to the first one. Still standing upon her rights 
and immunities as a sovereign State, she asserted that 
the United States government had no judicial power 
over such a case, and, simply entering a written pro- 
test to that effect, without deigning to recognize the 
jurisdiction of the court even so far as to enter into 
an argument of the matter, she refused to appear at 
the next term; and thus was the first great constitu- 
tional question brought before the supreme judicial 
tribunal of the government for decision — the question 
of a broad construction or a strict construction of the 
powers conferred upon the government by the States 
through the Constitution — the question of State sov- 
ereignty and State rights — the question upon which 



158 Some Truths of History. 

the convention that framed the Constitution would, in 
all probability, have split irremediably in two hut for 
the opportune patriotic action of a Georgia delegate 
hi that convention. That body, as is well known to 
those familiar with its history, was divided into two 
parties, the Nationals and the Federals. The Fed- 
erals were those who were in favor of forming a 
strictly Federal government, which would preserve 
unimpaired the rights, equality and separate sover- 
eignty of the States; while the Nationals contended 
for a government more national than federal — a cen- 
tralized, consolidated government, in which the idea 
of States should be almost annihilated. From an in- 
correct political nomenclature, which has been per- 
mitted to take historical root so long that it is not 
likely ever to be eradicated from the public mind, the 
Nationals, or Consolidationists, of that convention — 
Hamilton, Madison, Randolph, Morris, Wilson, and 
their allies and followers — are commonly said and be- 
lieved to have been Federalist leaders in it. The very 
reverse of this is true. They contended most strenu- 
ously against the Federal, State-sovereignty idea. 
They wanted, as was expressly declared by Mr. Ran- 
dolph, ''a consolidated Union, in which the idea of 
States should be nearly annihilated.'' 

The Federals finally succeeded in having the State- 
sovereignty principle incorporated in the Constitu- 
tion, and this secured their adhesion to it. But after- 
ward, when the Supreme Court was organized, and 
they saw that the judges were nearly all Nationals, 



Some Truths of History. 159 

they feared that, under color of its power to construe 
the Constitution, that court would, by a broad con- 
struction of its power, attempt to extinguish the great 
vital principle of the Union, which they had so hardly 
saved from annihilation at the hands of the Nationals 
in the convention. They had not long to wait for 
proof that their fears were well founded. The court 
had been in existence but three years when the appre- 
hended attempt was made by commanding the sov- 
ereign State of Georgia to appear before it on a level 
with a private individual, a citizen of another State, 
and defend herself against a prosecution by that indi- 
vidual. Georgia, as we have seen, refused to obey the 
command. The command was repeated, and so was 
the refusal. Then the Supreme Court issued its ulti- 
matum ''that unless the State of Georgia shall either 
in due form appear, or show cause to the contrary 
in this court, by the first day of next term, judgment 
by default shall be entered against the said State." 
The next term came, but Georgia defied the power of 
the court, and came not with it. The court then ren- 
dered judgment against her and awarded a writ of 
inquiry. By this time there was much excitement in 
the public mind throughout the Union over the situ- 
ation. The decision of the court was regarded as a 
direct attack upon the sovereignty of the States and 
a breach of the conditions upon which the Union was 
formed, and it would have certainly ended in the 
destruction of the government had not Congress at 
this juncture proposed an amendment to the Consti- 



160 Some Truths of History. 

tution, declaring in explicit terms that ''the judicial 
power of the United States shall not be construed to 
extend to any suit in law or equity commenced or 
prosecuted against one of the United States by citi- 
zens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any 
foreign State." The amendment was speedily 
adopted, and the Supreme Court then unanimously 
decided that the case against Georgia could be no 
further prosecuted, and it was swept at once from 
the records of the court. Such is the history of the 
way in which the eleventh amendment came to be 
adopted. 

The Supreme Court at that time was presided over 
by John Jay, of New York, chief justice; with Wil- 
liam Cushing, of Massachusetts; James Wilson, of 
Pennsylvania; John Blair, of Virginia; James Ire- 
dell, of North Carolina; and Thomas Johnson, of 
Maryland, associate justices. Jay, Wilson and Ire- 
dell were unquestionably the ablest of the number, 
and of these three, Jay, on account of his longer 
public career and the exalted positions he had held, 
was the most distinguished, and Wilson the most 
erudite. Of Iredell it is enough to say that North 
Carolina never had a brighter exemplar of that wis- 
dom and integrity, and that simple dignity and mod- 
esty so characteristic of the illustrious men of that 
State. In the great case of which I write he was 
the only judge who upheld the constitutional right 
asserted by Georgia, and it is impossible to arise from 
the reading of his dissenting opinion without being 



Some Truths of History. 161 

convinced that, as a constitutional lawyer, he had no 
equal on the bench. The soundness of that opinion 
was attested by the subsequent overthrow of the judg- 
ment of the court by the eleventh amendment. Chief 
Justice Jay's opinion in this case was by far the most 
elaborate ever delivered by him while on the bench. 
That of Judge Wilson is a striking display of the 
wide range of his erudition. The momentous nature 
of the question under consideration was stated by 
him in the following words: ''This is a case of un- 
common magnitude. One of the parties to it is a 
State, certainly respectable, claiming to be sovereign. 
The question to be determined is, whether this State, 
so respectable and whose claim soars so high, is 
amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court 
of the United States. This question, important in 
itself, may depend on others more important still, and 
may, perhaps, be ultimately resolved into one no less 
radical than this, 'Do the people of the United States 
form a nation?' " 

Profoundly impressed with a sense of the conse- 
quences which he foresaw w^ould flow from the doc- 
trine of his associates on the bench, Judge Iredell, in 
closing his dissenting opinion, said : "I pray to God 
that, if this doctrine as to the law be established by 
the judgment of this court, all the good predicted 
from it may take place, and none of the evils with 
which, I have the concern to say, it appears to me 
to be pregnant." Nothing but the amendment com- 

(11) 



162 Some Truths op History. 

pelled by Georgia's unyielding attitude averted the 
evils which this great judge so feared. 

To the mind of the student of those times one re- 
markable fact must occur in connection with this de- 
cision of the Supreme Court. When the Constitu- 
tion had been framed, and was submitted to the States 
for that approval from them which was necessary to 
put it in operation, it was so strongly opposed in some 
of the States as to make the required ratification doubt- 
ful. The opposition to it was based chiefly on the 
alleged ground that it made the United States govern- 
ment too strong and left the State governments too 
weak; that it took from the States the sovereignty 
which was theirs and ought to remain theirs, and 
conferred it on the United States, making of the lat- 
ter a consolidated national government, which would, 
sooner or later, "annihilate" the States, instead of 
making them that federal government which was the 
avowed object of the convention that framed the Con- 
stitution. ''It squints towards a monarchy," said 
Patrick Henry. ' ' The government established by the 
Constitution will surely end either in monarchy or 
a tyrannical aristocracy," said Mason, of Virginia. 

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, 
who were leaders of the National party, accepted the 
Constitution as a compromise between the Nationals 
and the Federals (State-rights men) of the conven- 
tion, and they advocated its adoption because, as Mr. 
Jay said, they thought it ''improbable that a better 
plan could be obtained." To answer the objections. 



Lv eWi/^'^^ 



C\/^-' 



Some Truths of History. 163 

dispel the fears, and win for it the votes of those 
who thought the States were left too powerless by the 
proposed plan of government, they wrote in conjunc- 
tion a series of papers in which they vindicated it 
from the charge of despoiling the States of their 
rights or sovereignty. These writings exercised a 
powerful influence on the public mind. They were 
published in the newspapers of the day, and subse- 
quently in the form of a book called the Federalist, 
of which Chancellor Kent said : ' ' I know not of any 
work on the principles of free government that is to 
be compared in instruction and intrinsic value to this 
small and unpretending volume." This book was 
then, and is still, regarded as the ablest contribution 
to American political science. 

One of the specific suggestions urged against the 
Constitution was that it would, if adopted, place the 
States in a situation where any one of them might 
be subjected to prosecution by the citizens of another. 
To this the Federalist replied that the danger inti- 
mated was "merely ideal," and that there was "no 
colour to pretend that the State governments would, 
by the adoption of the Constitution, be divested of the 
privilege of paying their own debts in their own way, 
free from every constraint but that which flows from 
the obligations of good faith." "To what purpose," 
it added, "would it be to authorize suits against 
States for the debts they owe ? How could recoveries 
be enforced? It is evident that it could not be done 
without waging war against the contracting State; 



164 Some Truths of History. 

and to ascribe to the Federal courts, by mere impli- 
cation, and in destruction of a pre-existing right of 
the State governments, a power which would involve 
such a consequence, would be altogether forced and 
unwarrantaMe." 

That not more than five years had elapsed, after the 
penning of these words, when this power was assumed 
by a court presided over by one of the authors of the 
Federalist, is what, I say, must strike the reader as 
remarkable. 

Those who are familiar with the case, and who have 
also read the memoirs of the late Associate-Justice 
Curtis, of the United States Supreme Court, must 
have been surprised when they read that learned 
judge's reference to the ''very able opinion of Mr. 
Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Chisholm against 
Georgia." It is indeed surprising that Judge Cur- 
tis committed such an anachronism in a paper pre- 
pared with so much elaborateness and reviewed with 
so much care as the one in which this reference is 
made. It was nearly ten years after the case cited 
before Chief Justice Marshall went upon the Supreme 
Court bench. 

I have said that the federal convention would, in all 
human probability, have been rent irreparably in 
twain before the accomplishment of its high mission 
but for the opportune patriotic action of one of the 
delegates from Georgia. History shows this to be 
true. The threatening contest in the convention 
turned on the rule by which the States should be 



Some Truths of History. 165 

represented and vote in the government; the smaller 
States insisting on the rule of equality in all rspects ; 
the larger (or national States), on the rule of pro- 
portion to inhabitants. It was during this contest, 
and in view of the disastrous consequences it fore- 
boded, that Benjamin Franklin made his memorable 
motion for prayer. Addressing himself to Washing- 
ton, the president of the convention, he said : "In 
this situation of the assembly, groping in the dark as 
it were to find political truth, and scarce able to dis- 
tinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, 
sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly 
applying to the Father of Light to illuminate our 
understandings ? ' ' 

The national States carried their point as to the 
house of representatives, the smaller States yielding 
to the proportionate rule, or national principle, as to 
that branch of Congress ; that is, that the votes of each 
State in that branch should be in proportion to the 
number of its inhabitants. They yielded that point, 
hoping that by doing so they would secure a compro- 
mise that would establish the federal or State-rights 
principle in the second branch or Senate, allowing 
each State an equal vote in that branch. ' ' For, ' ' said 
Mr. Ellsworth, the federal leader, "if no compromise 
should take place, the meeting would be not only 
vain, but worse than vain." But the Nationals 
pushed forward for establishing the proportional rule 
in the Senate also, and to this the Federals declared 
their inflexible resolve never to consent. This, then 



166 Some Truths of History. 

— the rule of representation in the Senate — was the 
Gordian knot of the convention, the Scylla and the 
Chary bdis against and around the perilous edges of 
which it dashed and whirled again and again, till it 
well-nigh went to pieces. The Nationals were per- 
sistent, the smaller States were immovable, and the 
abrupt and speedy ending of all negotiations between 
them seemed inevitable. "You must give each State 
an equal suffrage, or our business is at an end," ex- 
claimed Luther Martin, who was a delegate from 
Maryland. The hour of the convention's dissolution 
appeared indeed to be at hand. Martin, speaking 
of it afterward, said it seemed ''scarce held together 
by the strength of a hair." On Monday, the 2d of 
July, five weeks after the meeting of the convention, 
the decisive moment came, when Mr. Ellsworth moved 
to establish the rule ''that each State be allowed an 
equal vote in the Senate." Unless there should be 
found one national State patriotic and wise enough 
to be willing to compromise, there would be no Un- 
ion. A historian of the occasion says: "It was a 
critical moment in the history of the countrj^. On 
the change of a single vote the most stupendous is- 
sues were suspended." "On the motion of Ells- 
worth," says Mr. Bancroft, "five States voted for 
equal suffrage in the Senate; five of the six national 
States answered, 'no.' All interest then centred on 
Georgia, the sixth national State, and the last to vote. 
Baldwin, fearing a disruption of the convention, and 
convinced of the hopelessness of assembling another 



Some Truths of History. 167 

under better auspices, dissented from his colleague, 
and divided the vote of his State." This led to the 
compromise which resulted in the formation of the 
American Constitution and the Union of the States. 

There they are together: Baldwin's dissenting vote, 
and Iredell's dissenting opinion. Let them live, with 
the Constitution and the Union under it, in the 
hearts of men through al l succeeding ages 1^ 

1 ''Few of the present generation know how much we owe to those tvvo 
ereat merand you have' performed a valuable service in teaching to the 
SSear^d a CJn which should never be forgotten. "-From a letter to the 
writer from Jefferson Davis. 



168 Some Truths op History. 



[Written for and published in the Union and Recorder (Mil- 
ledgeville, Ga.), April 10, 1883] 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS.^ 



Had 'st thou but lived, though stripp 'd of power, 

A watchman on the lonely tower, 
Thy thrilling trump had roused the land, 

When fraud or danger were at hand. 



"But now * * * 

The trumpet's silver sound is still. 
The warder silent on the hill ! ' ' 



''His whole life was spent in the practice of virtue, the pur- 
suit of truth, seeking the good of mankind." — Robert Toombs. 

On the evening of the third of March, Dr. H. H. 
Steiner, of Augusta, then in Atlanta, wrote me as fol- 
lows: 

"Our friend, Governor Stephens, is extremely ill. 
I have never been so anxious about him before. * 

"If he can be made to sleep well to-night, he may 
be better in the morning. I am deeply anxious about 
him. ' ' 

The morning after these lines were written, and be- 
fore I had received them, as I was on my way to the 

1. Died March 4, 1883. 



Some Truths of History. 169 

Baptist church in the city of Americus, I heard fall 
from the lips of a little boy the words — ''Governor 
Stephens is dead. ' ' — Speedy and anxious inquiry only 
too surely proved their truth. Sleep ; restful, balmy, 
life-renewing sleep, which lies with the vile in loath- 
some beds, and gives its repose to the wet sea-boy 
in the storm's rude hours, did not come to the states- 
man who was dying for the want of it, and when that 
night had passed away he had "another morn than 
ours. " • • 

Five wrecks have come and gone since then, and 
many more must be numbered with the eternal past 
before the words, "Mr. Stephens is dead," can lose 
the strangeness of their sound to ears that have so 
long been used to listening with reverent attention 
to his voice, or cease to dim the eyes that have so 
long been cheered by the sunshine of his presence. 

A month and more has passed since that sad day, 
and though I have stood beside the coffin 'd clay, and 
looked upon the lifeless form, and seen it prison 'd 
in the tomb, mid the solemn hush of the mighty, 
mourning multitude, "yet cannot I by force be led 
to think upon the wormy bed, and him together," 
nor realize that his eloquent tongue is forever mute 
in the cold grave. Cheek to cheek through life he 
had lain close by the ' ' pallid angel, Pain ' ' ; long, long, 
had his poor frame been stretched upon the rack of 
this tough world, but in death there was no pain- 
rack seen, no sign of the life-long, hand-to-hand com- 
bat with suffering and disease; but a repose, instead 



170 Some Truths of History. 

— an ineffable, wondrous calm, like that which comes 
to the tired child charmed to sleep by gentlest lullaby 
in its mother's arms. Often had I seen that face in 
sleep in life, but never in life had I seen the per- 
fectly serene expression, the ''rapture of repose" 
that rested on it in the sleep of death. There was a 
"halo hovering round decay" that almost for 

"one treacherous hour 
Made me doubt the tyrant 's power ; 
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd, 
The first, last look by death reveaPd. ^' 

Oh! how I wished, as I gazed upon them, that the 
shrouded eyes could open and meet my own with the 
soul-lit glance of old once more; that the fragile fin- 
gers could thrill me with their touch again, and the 
tongue speak the old familiar words of welcome. 
They were words he ever loved to speak. I have a 
mental photograph album in which he wrote down 
answers to a series of questions intended to bring out 
a correct mental portraiture. One of the questions 
is — "What are the sweetest words in the world?" 
His answer is — "The words of greeting to a friend." 
How the loving heart of the man in shown by this 
simple answer. No mortal accents sweeter to his ear 
than the greeting from the friend he loved! And 
with what delightful ease he entertained all friendly 
comers. Who that ever met him in the social circle, 
or at his own beloved Liberty Hall, or in his hospit- 
able rooms in Washington, does not remember the 



Some Truths op History. 171 

frankness that spread animation and ease around it, 
the eye that spoke affability to all, that chased tim- 
idity from every bosom, and told every one in the 
company to be confident and happy ? 

Before dwelling more particularly upon that social 
and private life, so attractive to all who came within 
reach of it, I desire to make some allusion to the re- 
markable characteristics which made his public life 
so deserving of the study and admiration of man- 
kind. Dr. H. V. M. Miller, in a speech which showed 
more of the genuine orator than any other I have 
heard since Howell Cobb's Bush Arbor speech, truly 
said that Mr. Stephens's most eminent characteristic 
was "his majestic wisdom." I have seen a greater 
scholar, I have seen a man of higher and wider lit- 
erary culture and a more polished writer, and have 
heard a more eloquent orator, but I have never known 
another as wise as Mr. Stephens. It is one thing to 
be well-informed; it is another to be wise. Many 
there be who have read many books and hived up 
innumerable facts in capacious memories, but who 
have not wisdom.— Many there be of extraordinary 
talent and exceeding brilliancy of powers, but who 
have yet not wisdom — the wisdom which Solomon 
prayed for when he said: ''Give me a wise and un- 
derstanding heart." Somebody has said that for this 
sort of wisdom two things are required: earnestness 
and love. The earnestness which looks on life practi- 
cally, which ponders upon it, trying to understand its 
mystery, not in order to talk about it like an orator, 



172 Some Truths of History. 

nor to theorize about it like a philosopher, but in 
order to know how to live and how to die; and the 
love which opens the heart, and makes it generous, 
and reveals secrets deeper than prudence or political 
economy teaches; the love which, long ago, found 
utterance in the words, "It is more blessed to give 
than to receive." 

If Alexander H. Stephens did not possess that 
earnestness, and that love, then they never found 
abiding place in the heart of man. They did dwell 
in his heart, else he had never risen so far above his 
fellows in the subordination of passion and prejudice 
to calm, clear reason. Therein was the great differ- 
ence between him and most other men. Their relig- 
ious, political and personal prejudices sway them, 
while he, regarding prejudice as the most formidable 
obstacle to the advancement of truth, of which he 
was a most sincere adorer, sternly exorcised its bane- 
ful presence from his mind, and walked ever in the 
way where reason led. Truth was the pole-star of 
his life; to its ascertainment were all the efforts of 
his reason directed, its light he followed with unfal- 
tering tread, at its pure shrine he worshiped with a 
devotion as ardent and unswerving as Gheber's to 
the sun. His reason — his wisdom — taught him that 
truth should never yield to error; that principle 
should never be sacrificed, even momentarily, to pol- 
icy; and he had the courage which enabled him to 
face and defy danger and defeat of any sort in main- 
taining what he believed to be true and right. 



Some Truths of History. 173 

*'He never sold the truth to serve the hour, 
Nor palter 'd with Eternal God for power. ' ' 

"I believe to-day," said Dr. Miller, ''after a life- 
long acquaintance with him, that he was the bravest 
man I ever looked in the face." 

A few days ago I met Mr. W. F. Herring, a well- 
known Georgian, now living in New York. He told 
me that, when a boy in Atlanta, he witnessed the 
attack made on Mr. Stephens by a desperate man of 
giant frame. He saw the strong man's knife raised 
above the throat of his weak and prostrate victim, 
and heard the hoarse imprecation with Avhich he said, 
' ' Retract, or I '11 cut ! ' ' Looking his foe in the face, 
the blood streaming from the wounds he had already 
received, and the gleaming blade about to descend 
in a last, fatal blow, the almost dying but undaunted 
man answered, ''Never! Cut!" Mr. Herring says 
that, to his dying day, he can never forget that ex- 
hibition of the most utter fearlessness which he thinks 
human nature can possibly exhibit. 

But it was not alone the sort of bravery witnessed 
by ]\Ir. Herring that Dr. Miller meant. It was the 
courage I have just spoken of, which gave him the 
will and moral strength to say and do what he be- 
lieved to be right, regardless of what might be the 
personal or political consequences to himself. His 
Avhole life was an illustration of this rare courage, but 
I will recall one instance of it which dwells partic- 
ularly in my memory because I witnessed it, and be- 
cause it occurred at a time when, in doing what he 



174 Some Truths of History. 

did, he had to breast the waves of partisan and sec- 
tional fury at their highest. 

It was during the congressional session of 1874- '5, 
when the country was convulsed with the Louisiana 
troubles, and every other question had given way to 
the most momentous one of the hour — ''What should 
be done in regard to Louisiana"? Rival bodies 
were claiming authority over her citizens, business 
was paralyzed, bloodshed and utter distraction were 
imminent, and a congressional committee was sent 
there to devise, if possible, some plan that would re- 
store tranquility to the much disordered common- 
wealth and revive her perishing commerce. It re- 
sulted in the submission to Congress of what was 
known as the Wheeler compromise, so called for the 
Hon. William R. Wheeler, who was its author and a 
Republican. The Democratic members of the com- 
mittee did not agree to the Wheeler proposition for 
the settlement of the vexed and irritating question, 
seeming to prefer rather that it should remain open 
and unsettled for the time, and when a vote was 
taken on a motion looking to its adoption, the Demo- 
crats generally voted against it. As the roll-call pro- 
gressed, and neared its end, it was seen that the result 
might turn upon one vote. This possibility grew into 
a stronger and stronger probability until, as the name 
of Stephens was approached, it was almost a certainty. 
When the name was called, ''Aye" came clear and 
ringing from the brave old statesman in the roller- 



Some Truths of History. 175 

chair, and Alexander H. Stephens's vote had assured 
the passing of the measure. 

Members turned with surprise in their seats, the 
galleries were astonished, and even the reporters were 
startled and looked as if they thought he had voted 
*'aye" mistakenly. 'Twas a sight they were not ac- 
customed to — that of a man voting at variance with 
his party associates, and especially a Southern man, 
at such a fevered time as that. Of course a bitter 
outcry was at once raised over the vote by the ultra 
partisan papers and politicians, and the vials of their 
wrath were emptied on him, but not many months 
had elapsed before it was seen and generally admitted 
that the compromise was the wisest and most benefi- 
cent plan that could have been adopted for the set- 
tlement of the dangerous problem with which the 
country was then confronted in Louisiana. Had it 
not been adopted old chaos would have come again 
to that fair land, and there is no telling what havoc 
might have been wrought before order could have 
been restored. I have always thought that vote was 
one of the bravest acts of Mr. Stephens's public life, 
as well as one of the wisest. In it he exhibited that 
combination of wisdom and courage without which 
there can be made no complete title to the name of 
statesman. It is within my knowledge that more than 
one Southern Democratic member thought, as he did, 
that the adoption of the Wheeler compromise was the 
best thing that could be done at that time, under the 
existing circumstances, but they did not have the; 



1 76 Some Truths of History. 

courage to face the storm which they knew their votes 
for it would bring about their heads. So they either 
voted against it, or "dodged." Mr. Joseph Medill, 
the very able and distinguished editor of the Chicago 
Tribune, in an editorial on the incident here related, 
said of Mr. Stephens's action then: ''He has been 
true to the record of his life, and has recorded his 
vote in behalf of peace and reconciliation in Louisi- 
ana, and shown that he is anxious that the profitless, 
exhausting, and miserable struggle should come to an 
end. In the ordinary course of nature, he has but a 
short time to remain an active participant in human 
events, but that solitary vote for peace will outlive 
him and stand to his credit in history, after all the 
miserable partisan passions which it caused have sub- 
sided." 

The country is still familiar with his course on the 
famous Potter resolutions ; how he again differed with 
his party associates — was again assailed by blind par- 
tisan rancor and reckless and malicious misrepresen- 
tation — and how the wisdom of his course was again 
speedily and completely vindicated. Verily, Dr. Mil- 
ler spoke the truth when he said that this man, like 
Samuel of old, ''had understanding of the times, to 
know what Israel ought to do." Look back over his 
whole long career and name, I pray you, if you can, 
the thing that he advised the people to do which the 
future did not prove it had been best for them to 
have done; or the thing that he warned them not to 



Some Truths op History. 177 

do, the consequences of which, when done, did not 
prove the wisdom of his warning. 

He was democratic, not in the modern sense of the 
term, as never bolting a caucus nomination nor dif- 
fering from a caucus policy, but on principle, as 
founded in a strict, in contradistinction to a latitud- 
inarian construction of the Constitution, and as ex- 
pressed in his own definition of what should be the 
great object of government, namely, to secure the 
greatest good to every member of society that can 
possibly be accomplished without injury to any. The 
principles embodied in the American Constitution he 
regarded as a sacred depository — a vestal fire, which 
Providence had committed to the American people for 
the general benefit of mankind; and he felt that it 
is the world's last hope, and that if it be once ex- 
tinguished it cannot be rekindled. He devoted his 
life to the study of this wonderful American system, 
a study which, said the lamented Hill, ''to him who 
loves Liberty, is more enchanting than romance, more 
bewitching than love, and more elevating than any 
other science. ' ' So strong was his love for his native 
land that wjien, at the downfall of the Confederacy, 
he was advised to seek refuge in foreign climes from 
the captivity and probable death that awaited him 
here, he answered, "No, I would rather die in this 
country than live in any other. I will remain, and 
accept whatever fate is in store for me." 

The gifted Mrs. Mary E. Bryan, in an admirable 

(12) 



178 Some Truths of History. 

article in the Sunny South, told in apt and graceful 
phrase of that strong fibre of sympathy with the yeo- 
manry of the land which was born in him, and was 
nurtured by the associations of his earlier years, and 
remained with him through life, that gave him his 
hold upon the hearts of the people. Never had I 
been so struck with the rural element in his nature, 
with the ''blending of the yeoman and the patrician, 
the patriarch and the statesman," as I was during 
the canvass he made in 1878 — the last canvass he 
ever made of his old district. It was a beautiful 
revelation to me — that travel with him through the 
counties of his district, and witnessing the intercourse 
between him and the country people. It showed that 
the title of ''the great commoner" was not misbe- 
stowed upon him, and that, if constituents never had 
more faithful representative, so never had represen- 
tative more devoted constituents. 

When a man has been returned to Congress unin- 
terruptedly for a long series of 3^ears, he comes to be 
regarded as, to a great extent, the true portraiture 
and personification of the people who send him there. 
What an honor to the people of the (old) Eighth 
Georgia district — what a lustre it shed upon them, to 
have such a man as Alexander H. Stephens regarded 
as a type of themselves ! When will they — when will 
Georgia — America — have another like him? His 
wisdom, his experience, his unsullied integrity, his 
ardent patriotism, his cool and deliberate judgment, 
his conciliatory temper, his firm adherence to prin- 



Some Truths op History. 179 

ciple — when and where shall we find a substitute for 
them? 

But of his public life others can tell; others have 
told with far more ability and familiarity than is 
possible with me. That he accomplished what he did, 
with all the odds against him, makes him one of the 
marvels of history. "He is the most remarkable 
man I ever knew, ' ' I once heard Herschel V. Johnson 
say of him. Was it not one like him in the mind 
of the poet when he wrote of that 

^^' ' ''divinely gifted man. 

Whose life in low estate began. 
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar 
And breasts the blows of circumstance. 
And grapples with his evil star; 
Who makes by force his merit known 
And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mould a mighty state's decrees. 
And shape the whisper of the throne?" 

Of the world's great men, Washington was his 
model, and it may be said of him as of that most 
illustrious American, that he loved fame, the appro- 
val of coming generations, the good opinion of his 
fellow-men of his time; and he desired to make his 
conduct coincide with their wishes; but not fear of 
censure, nor the prospect of applause, could tempt 
him to swerve from rectitude; and the praise which 
he coveted was the sympathy of that moral sentiment 
which exists in every human heart, and goes forth 
only to the welcome of virtue. 



180 Some Truths of History. 

There is a character in fiction whose peculiar situa- 
tion and career in the troublous times in which he was 
made to take a part I have often heard Mr. Stephens 
characterize as a striking counterpart of his own posi- 
tion and course in public life. It is the character of 
*^ Morton," in ''Old Mortality." 

The public life of a statesman is imperishably re- 
corded in the pages of his country's history, but we 
often have to regret the imperfection of the records of 

''That best portion of a good man's life, 
His little, nameless, unremember'd acts 
Of kindness and of love." 

Though Mr. Stephens's private life was more open 
to the public view than that of any other man whom 
I have ever known, or of whom I have ever read, yet 
much of its ''best portion" could be known only to 
those whom the chances of life threw into daily and 
hourly association with him. It was my lot — and how 
dearly I esteem it I have no words to tell — to live in 
such intimate relations with him for years, and I hold 
it a sacred duty, and precious privilege as well, to 
write my testimony of the beautiful life that was re- 
vealed to me in those hours when the world's eye was 
not on him. 

If there has ever been, since Calvary's bloody sweat 
and agony, a God-like life on earth, it was that which 
went out in Atlanta on that quiet Sabbath morning, 
five weeks agone. He was the kindest human being I 
ever knew. His poor little emaciated body was the 



Some Truths of History. 181 

casket of the biggest soul that ever went, shriven or 
Tinshriven, before the judgment bar of God. It might 
be said of him, as it was of the Man of Galilee, that he 
went about doing good. Wherever he saw the form of 
affliction he covered it with the tender web of his pity, 
and gave it, when he could, the helping hand and the 
sheltering arm. For him there was, in the sorrows 
and sufferings of earth's millions, an infinite voice 
crying out, ' ' Help ! help now, or it will soon be too 
late ! ' ' He said they were the saddest words in the 
world to him — those little words, — ''too late," and 
that he could conceive no idea of misery profounder 
than that conveyed in the utterance — ''Ye knew your 
duty, and ye did it not." 

Can I ever forget the thrilling pathos with which I 
have heard him read the speech of Jeanie Deans to 
the Queen, in behalf of Effie, the "puir sister," way- 
ward and sinning, and doomed to an ignominious 
death ? Even now I can hear him saying, in infinitely 
tender tones : 

' ' 0, madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sorrow 
for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whose 
mind is sae tossed that she can be neither ca'd fit to 
live or die, have some compassion on our misery ! Alas ! 
it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily our- 
selves, that we think on other people's sufferings. 
Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we are 
for righting our ain wrangs and fighting our ain bat- 
tles. But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind 
or to the body — and when the hour of death comes, 



182 Some Truths of History. 

that comes to high and low — 0, my Leddy, then it is 
na what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae 
dune for others that we think on maist pleasantly." 

And so, through life, he was doing for others, and 
laying up pleasant thoughts against the hour of death. 
During the seventy odd years of his existence, he con- 
tributed more to the sum of human happiness than the 
vast majority of men would were their lives prolonged 
to seventy times seventy. His benevolence was as 
boundless as the air, and his charity as wide as the 
welkin. Like Abou Ben Adhem, his name could be 
written in the angel's book as one who loved his fel- 
low men. And his fellow men loved him. The 
dewy eyes and saddened faces in that vast multitude 
that gathered round his bier in Georgia's shrouded 
capitol, bore testimony to the depth of the hold he 
had upon their hearts. Among the number was one 
who was observed to linger longer and bend lowlier 
over the dead than the others, and when he finally 
turned from a last, long, lingering look at the wan, 
still face, and the folded hands, tears were seen 
trickling down the bearded cheeks. He had taken 
the life of his fellow man in combat, and the little 
hand that lay tbere stilled in death before him had 
written the pardon that stripped from his limbs the 
shackles that had been placed upon them to remain 
while he should live, and the lips so speechless now 
had said to him, ' ' Go, be free, and sin no more. ' ' And 
gazing on that cold, dead, merciful hand, and on those 



Some Truths of History. 183 

death-sealed lips, the bronzed, scarred man wept like a 
child. 

''I look upon a day as lost," said the great Dr. 
Johnson, "in which I do not make a new acquain- 
tance." I believe Mr. Stephens came to look upon a 
day as lost in which he did not do something to add 
to somebody's happiness. General Jackson has told 
us how, when asked about the room he used to keep 
at Liberty Hall for tramps, he answered, "Yes, I feel 
it my duty to try to make everybody as happy as I 
can," and of his servant's declaration that "Mars 
Alec is kinder to dogs than most people is to folks." 
How thick upon my memory come thronging incidents 
most touchingly illustrating the utter truthfulness of 
what both master and servant said ! Page after page 
could be filled with them. The world has long loved 
the character of "Uncle Toby," the brave old soldier, 
whose heart was so tender withal that he would not 
hurt a fly, and whose soul was so sinless that, when the 
oath he uttered was borne to Heaven's chancery, the 
Accusing Spirit blushed as he gave it in, and the Re- 
cording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear 
upon the word and blotted it out forever. Such a 
man, in very truth, was he of whom I write. I have 
heard him intercede for the life of the poor, buzzing, 
troublesome insect captured in his room of a summer 
night. "Don't kill it, just put it outside," he would 
say, so gently and so earnestly. He seemed to feel 
that "the meanest beetle that we tread upon, in cor- 
poral sufferance finds a pang as great as when a giant 



184 Some Truths of History. 

dies," and he would not inflict that pang upon any 
living creature. I have seen his heart moved by the 
piteous, appealing look of a friendless dog that passed 
him on the wayside, and of all the demonstrations of 
joy with which he was met on his return home after a 
long absence, none were livelier nor sincerer than those 
made by ''Pluck," the poor dumb and blind brute who 
was nowhere so happy as at his master's feet. 

Many, many deeds of kindness and of love, many 
tender associations rise vividly before me now, for 
sorrow sharpens memory, but they must go unrecorded 
save on the hearts whereon they are written in letters 
of unfading love. 

Doubtless, it has occurred to some to ask, "How 
could this man, whose heart was so full of divine love 
and tenderness, seek to take the life of his fellow-man, 
by challenging him to mortal combat!" I had often 
asked myself the question after I came to know him, 
and once, when talking with him of the differences 
which led to the hostile correspondence with that other 
distinguished Georgian, I expressed to him my self- 
questioning, in view of the fatal consequences that 
might have followed. He replied, "I didn't intend 
to kill him," and then I knew that within that bosom 
there had never entered the dreadful motion of a mur- 
derous thought. The latter days of the two men who 
had been so estranged in earlier life were marked by 
a cordiality of intercourse that admitted no question 
of the complete obliteration of whatever unpleasant- 
ness of feeling had existed in the past. Scarce a 



Some Truths of History. 

twelvemonth ago I saw them together in most friendly, 
even tender, social communion. It was the last time 
I saw one of them, for he was then ''almost home." 
Death had already lain its all-conquering hand upon 
his majestic form, and was hurrying him with relent- 
less swiftness to the grave, whither the other was soon 
to follow him. Let us hope they are together now in 
the perpetual peace of Paradise. 

Many devout men have I known, but never one of 
them all, layman or preacher, with charity like Mr. 
Stephens. I verily believe that charity greater than 
his has not dwelt in this breathing world since He left 
it who condemned not the erring Magdalen, and par- 
doned the penitent thief upon the cross. I know no 
wearer of the sacerdotal robe who might not have sat 
at his feet and learned of this heavenly essence. I 
mean not the charity of giving pecuniary assistance to 
the poor and needy — to which the most of his sub- 
stance was devoted — not the charity of the purse, but 
the charity of the soul, and martyrdom of the temper ; 
the charity which says, "Judge not, that ye be not 
judged;" which prays, 

''Let not this weak, unknowing hand, 
Presume Thy bolts to throw; 
And deal damnation round the land. 
On him I deem Thy foe.'' 

The charity which moved him ever, when his enemies 
were bitterest and his detractors loudest and most reck- 
less, to say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not 



186 Some Truths op History. 

what they do. ' ' The charity which made him ' ' gently 
scan his brother man," remembering that ''to step 
aside is human," and which finds such eloquent ex- 
pression in the words he so often quoted from the im- 
mortal Burns : 

''Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us; 
He knows each chord — its various tone, 

Each spring — its various bias; 
Then at the balance let 's be mute. 

We never can adjust it; 
What 's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what 's resisted. ' ' 

'Twas the glorifying magic of this heaven-descended 
virtue, that had made its home so long within that 
roller-chair, which made the great-hearted Jackson 
feel that ' ' the lines over which those wheels had rolled 
were holy; — that no Georgian could cross them with 
a base thought in his head, or a mean, malignant feel- 
ing in his heart, without becoming a traitor to the 
mother-earth which gave that frail, attenuated frame 
to the world," and now has "hugged it to herself 
again. ' ' 

My pen lingers. All conscious as I am of its utter 
powerlessness to render fitting tribute, or fashion 
words to tell my love and veneration for the illustri- 
ous dead, I feel that I should not lay it down without 
declaring that I cannot for a moment entertain the 
idea that Mr. Stephens 's death was caused or hastened 
by any over-taxing of his mental or physical powers 



Some Truths of History. 187 

by the duties of his office. Justice to his memory will 
not permit me to hold any such belief as that. I had 
known him, his way of life, his capacity for mental 
labor, too long and too thoroughly for such a thought 
to have an instant's lodgment in my mind. What was 
there in the office of Governor of Georgia to put the 
mind of Alexander Stephens to its bent? What evi- 
dence is there of any loosening from its moorings of 
that mighty intellect— of any straying of that marvel- 
ous mental mechanism from its proper and accustomed 
track till after days and nights of mortal illness had 
fallen upon his body, and his senses had been steeped 
in stupefying potions? Is it in the book he had but 
recently written ? Read it and see. Is it in those po- 
litical speeches to the people of Georgia, but a few 
months since, which attracted the attention and com- 
manded the admiration of the most enlightened minds 
in the Union? Read them and say where and who is 
the man whose utterances display more unerring logic, 
more exalted statesmanship, or are more abounding in 
political lore. Is it in any act as Chief Executive of 
the State? Name it. Is it in any writing penned by 
his hand or at his dictation during the last six months ? 
Produce it. Is it in the speech delivered in the pres- 
ence of that immense audience in Georgia's most cul- 
tured city a fortnight before his death? I saw him 
and talked with him the night of his departure for 
Savannah, and never saw him with brighter look nor 
heard him speak in cheerier tone than then. No, no ; 



188 Some Truths of History. 

'twas no strain of mind nor body in the performance 
of Executive duties that snapped the thread of life. 
He would have died sooner without any work than 
from the work he had to do as Governor. Industry 
was an attribute of his nature; labor an inherent im- 
pulsion, and a habit. Work was the law of his being. 
He worked to kill pain, and had the outer framework 
not been touched by the paralyzing hand of death the 
glorious engine within would be still working on un- 
hurt, with its wonted and its iron power. 

But the mandate came, bidding it to cease, and the 
silver cord was loosed; broken was the golden bowl; 
the long day 's task was done — the ' ' fitful fever ' ' over. 
Sleep had come at last, and a sage, a patriot, a states- 
man, and a philanthropist was gone ! 

''Gone; but nothing can bereave him 
Of the force he made his own 
Being here, and we believe him 
Something far advanced in State, 
And that he wears a truer crown 
Than any wreath that man can weave him. ' ' 

However saddening to thousands of others was the 
summons that called him hence, we know that there 
were no terrors in that call for him. Throughout his 
earthly pilgrimage he had kept ''a correspondence 
fixed with Heaven, ' and had lived ever mindful of the 
solemn hour that waited for him somewhere on life's 
uncertain way. 

I think, in all history, there is not an instance of a 
fitter closing of a nobler life. He was not made to sur- 



Some Truths of History. 189 

vive his usefulness — to lag superflous on the stage. 
Often have I heard him say, when the pale messenger 
was hovering over him, that he did not wish to out- 
live his capacity to serve his fellow-men. 

*'He cared not to be great 
But as he saved or served the State." 

Death found him with ' ' the harness on, ' ' at the post 
of duty to which his countrymen had called him, and 
to which he went in that spirit of consecration which 
marked his life, and made him disregard the relaxa- 
tions and exemptions of age. It came to him in a beau- 
tiful old age, finding him blessed with all that should 
accompany it — "as honor, love, obedience, troops of 
friends," and so tenderly did it loosen the bonds that 
held the spirit in its tenement of clay, that he knew 
none of the stern agony of the parting hour, but went 
''like one who had wrapped the drapery of his couch 
about him and lain down to pleasant dreams. ' ' Where 
else could it have come to him so fitly? Where else 
would he have sooner met it than in the chief and cap- 
ital city of his native State, in the service of the peo- 
ple he loved so well, and who so well loved him? 
Where but in the very midst of the people to whom all 
the throbbings of his heart were given would he have 
been so willing to have those throbbings cease ? And, 
as if absolutely nothing should be wanting to complete 
the symmetry of his glorious life, and carry its sacred 
similitude as far as mortal nature would permit, its 
last official act, done while he lay upon his dying bed, 



190 Some Truths of History. 

was the pardon of a criminal. Did not the gentle, lov- 
ing Jesus, in the very agony of crucifixion, do the 
same? 

The eternal silence wraps him now. Hidden forever 
from our sight is that dear, familiar, fragile form; 
closed in death are the eyes whose glance had magic in 
it ; never again will our heartstrings be thrilled by that 
clarion voice; but in the innermost shrines of our 
hearts is his memory embalmed and his image fixed 
f orevermore ! 

*'In the blank silence of the narrow tomb 

The clay may rest which wrapped his human birth ; 
But, all unconquered by that silent doom. 
The spirit of his thought shall walk the earth, 
In glory and in light. ' ' 



Some Truths of History. 191 



THE SHACKLING OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 



[Eead before the Atlanta Camp of Confederate Veterans, at 
the Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia, March 20, 1899.] 

On the third of December, 1865, Robert E. Lee wrote 
to General G. T. Beauregard a letter touching the duty 
of the Southern people, with regard to perpetuating 
the truth of history as to the war between the States. 
"Every one," said General Lee to General Beaure- 
gard, "should do all in his power to collect and dis- 
seminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a 
place in history, and descend to posterity." 

Actuated by the spirit of these words of the great 
Confederate commander, I have, from time to time, 
published articles through the press, both North and 
South, reciting truths that should be disseminated, 
in vindication of the South against the misrepresen- 
tation and calumny of those who are ignorant of 
and inimical to her people, and nothing has given me 
greater gratification than the indorsement which my 
efforts in that direction have received from the United 
Confederate Veterans, both in single camps and in 
their general conventions. The approbation of no 
body of men on earth is more to be coveted. In fur- 
ther accordance with the quoted words of the South 's 
most illustrious chieftain, I have recently prepared a 
paper upon a subject in regard to which a studied 



192 Some Truths op History. 

attempt has been made to becloud the truth of his- 
tory, and, in compliance with the courteous invitation 
received through your commander, I will, with your 
kind indulgence, now read that paper to this Camp. 

In a sketch of General Nelson A. Miles, published in 
the Atlanta Journal on the 13th of last January, it 
was said: 

''It has been charged that of his own volition he 
placed Jefferson Davis, the beloved chieftan of the 
Confederacy, in chains while a prisoner in Fortress 
Monroe. This has been authoritatively denied, 
Miles claiming this was done by orders of Charles A. 
Dana, at that time assistant secretary of war. At 
any rate, when the Spanish- American war began, the 
fact that Miles placed Jefferson Davis in irons was 
revived, and bitter feeling was exhibited toward him 
in the South. When it was explained that he acted 
under orders from his superior, this feeling gradually 
softened, and little, if any, of it remains." 

An editorial in the Augusta Chronicle — the men- 
tion of that paper, I am sure, brings to every one 
here thoughts of him, so long its editor-in-chief, its 
presiding genius, whose spirit has just taken its 
flight from its tenement of clay. The State of Geor- 
gia never had a more devoted son than Patrick Walsh ; 
a truer friend, a more loyal and generous soul does 
not live upon her soil to-day. Peace to his ashes, and 
long may his memory be cherished and his virtues 
emulated in the beautiful city he loved and served 



Some Truths of History. 193 

so long and well.* An editorial in the Chronicle on 
the subject alluded to in the extract from the Atlanta 
Journal, said: 

''The whole case hinges on the question as to 
whether the official order upon which the shackling 
was done was mandatory or discretionary, and this 
question ought to be easily cleared up by the govern- 
ment record. '^ 

I have in my possession a fac-simile of the order 
referred to. Here it is, and this is the way it reads : 

''Fortress Monroe, May 22, 1865. 
"Brvt. Major General Miles is hereby authorized 
and directed to place manacles and fetters upon the 
hands and feet of Jefferson Davis and Clement C. 
Clay, Jr., whenever he may think it advisable in order 
to render their imprisonment more secure. 
"By order of the Secretary of War. 

"C. A. Dana, 
" Ass 't Secy, of War." 

I have before me, too, a copy of a telegram sent 
from Fortress Monroe by Mr. Dana to E. M. Stanton, 
Secretary of War, on the day when the order was 
issued. May 22, 1865. In this telegram Mr. Dana 
says: 

"I have not given orders to have them placed in 
irons, as General Halleck seemed opposed to it; but 

* Mr. Walsh died at his home in Augusta, Ga., Sunday morning, March 
19, 1899. 

as) 



194 Some Truths of History. 

General Miles is instructed to have fetters ready, if 
he thinks them necessary." 

Clement C. Clay, Jr., named in the order and re- 
ferred to in the telegram was a member of the Con- 
federate States Senate from Alabama, and was 
charged, like Mr. Davis, with having instigated the 
assassination of President Lincoln and the attempted 
assassination of William H. Seward, Secretary of 
State. When he saw the proclamation of President 
Johnson containing the charge, he voluntarily surren- 
dered himself to the nearest military authorities, pro- 
testing that no ground existed for the accusation. 
Notwithstanding this, he was kept in close confine- 
ment for a year, without any proof having been 
brought against him connecting his name in the slight- 
est way with the crime charged against him. 

Years after their release I talked with both of these 
illustrious men about their captivity, but it is not my 
purpose to relate my conversations with them in this 
connection. It is from Mrs. Davis that I have gath- 
ered and shall quote the most impressive testimony 
on the subject — the testimony that is contained in 
her memoir of her husband, which alone would clear 
up the question. 

Mr. Davis was captured near Irwinsville, Georgia, 
the 10th of May, 1865, his wife and baby (Winnie, 
"the Daughter of the Confederacy") being with 
him at the time. They were conveyed, by way of 
Macon and Augusta, to Port Royal, where they were 
placed on board of a vessel (the propeller ''Clyde") 



Some Truths of History. 195 

in which they were taken to Hampton Roads. Alex- 
ander H. Stephens, who was the Vice-President of 
the Confederate States, John H. Reagan, who was 
their Postmaster-General, Clement C. Clay, and Gen- 
eral Joseph Wheeler, were taken in the same vessel 
at the same time to the same place. 

MRS. DAVIS 'S FIRST MEETING WITH GENERAL MILES. 

At Hampton Roads, on the 22d day of May, Mr. 
Davis and Mr. Clay were placed on board a tug, in 
charge of General Miles, and transferred to Fortress 
Monroe, leaving Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Clay on the 
''Clyde." 

"The next day," says Mrs. Davis, "General Miles 
and some other officers came on board and summoned 
Mrs. Clay and me. * * * jj^ -^yg^g j^q^ respectful, 
but I thought it was his ignorance of polite usage. 
He declined to tell me anything of my husband or 
about our own destination, and said, 'Davis had an- 
nounced Mr. Lincoln's assassination the day before it 
happened, and he guessed he knew all about it. ' " 

This was the first meeting of Mrs. Jefferson Davis 
with General Nelson A. Miles. 

THEIR NEXT MEETING. 

A year from that time they met again. Mrs. Davis 
had at last been granted permission by the President 
of the United States to visit her husband, and had 
gone to Fortress Monroe for that purpose. General 
Miles was still in command there, and she had to see 



196 Some Truths of History. 

him before she could go to Mr. Davis. She awaited 
the general in the casemate to which she had been 
conducted, and here is her account of their second 
meeting : 

*'In a little while General Miles came in and as- 
sured me of 'Davis's' good health. He showed the 
same economy of titles in speaking of my husband 
from the time I went there until our departure. 
Sometimes he varied his nomenclature by calling him 
'Jeff Davis' or 'JetL' He asked me if I understood 
the terms to be that I was to take no deadly Sveepons' 
into the prison, to which I answered in the affirm- 
ative. ' ' 

MR. DAVIS 'S APPEARANCE AND HIS ROOM. 

Of Mr. Davis's appearance when her eyes had their 
first sight of him in prison, and of the place where 
he was confined, she says : 

"Through the bars of the inner room I saw Mr. 
Davis's shrunken form and glassy eyes; his cheek- 
bones stood out like those of a skeleton. Merely 
crossing the room made his breath come in short gasps, 
and his voice was scarcely audible. His room had 
a rough screen in one corner, a horse-bucket for wa- 
ter, a basin and pitcher that stood on a chair with 
the back sawn off for a washstand, and a hospital 
towel, a little iron bedstead with a hard mattress, 
one pillow, and a square, wooden table, a wooden- 
seated chair that had one short leg and rocked from 
side to side unexpectedly, and a Boston rocker which 



Some Truths of History. 197 

had been sent in a few weeks before. His table-cloth 
was a copy of the New York Herald, spread on the 
little table. The bed was so infested with insects as 
to give a perceptible odor to the room. He knew so 
little of such things that he could not imagine what 
annoyed him so at night, and insisted it was some 
cutaneous affection." 

MILES ^S PETTY INSULTS. 

Of the state of mind in which she found Mr. Davis, 
she says: 

''He was bitter at no earthly creature, but ex- 
pressed supreme contempt for the petty insults in- 
flicted hourly upon him by General Miles, who, he 
said, had exhausted his ingenuity to find something 
more afflicting to visit upon him. Among other 
things he told me that General Miles never walked 
with him on the ramparts, in enforced companion- 
ship, without saying something so offensive as to 
render the exercise a painful effort." 

As an instance of this sort of oft'ensiveness she re- 
lates that one day while the general was walking on 
the ramparts, in enforced companionship with Mr. 
Davis, he observed interrogatively that it was reported 
that John C. Calhoun had made much money by 
speculations, or favoring the speculations of his 
friends, connected with the work on Fortress Monroe, 
Mr. Calhoun being secretary of war at the time. This 
insinuation against the honor and honesty of that 



198 Some Truths of History. 

eminent statesman and patriot was promptly and in- 
dignantly repelled by Mr. Davis. 

"One day," says Mrs. Davis, "General Miles came 
to the prison and said something not recalled with 
sufficient clearness for repetition, but of such an in- 
sulting character that Mr. Davis sprang at the bars, 
and, as General Miles recoiled, said: 'But for these 
you should answer to me now.' " 

Mrs. Davis avers that her memory "does not fur- 
nish a record of the thousand little stabs he (General 
Miles) gave his emaciated, gray-haired prisoner." 
"Suffice it to say that he used his power to insult 
and annoy to the utmost, and in ways previously un- 
known and not to be anticipated by gentlefolk." 

Among the petty annoyances to which he was sub- 
jected was that of being intercepted in the restricted 
walks he was allowed to take, after his shackles were 
removed, by people — male and female, schoolgirls and 
their teachers — who were "let loose upon the ram- 
parts about the hour of his walk, to stare at him as 
though he were the caged monster of some traveling 
menagerie." Things like this, added to General 
Miles 's enforced and irritating company, prevented 
his deriving the benefit from his walks that he would 
have experienced had they been taken without such 
disagreeable accompaniments. Besides having Gen- 
eral Miles at his side, two armed guards were always 
close behind him. 

Continuing the relation of her experience with 
General Miles, Mrs. Davis says: 



Some Truths op History. 199 

•^ '^•^^^'^ 

**At first he fixed the shortest period and certain 
hours for my stay with Mr. Davis. After many ap- 
plications to spend the evenings with him, he at last 
consented; but if the general came over to the guard 
room and found us cheerfully talking together, 
whether at seven, at eight, or at ten o'clock, he left 
the room and sent an order for me to go home. Once 
or twice he said personally that it was 'shutting-up 
time.' I entreated him unavailingly to let me join 
Mr. Davis in his walks, as he was too weak to walk 
alone, and would avail himself of my arm, though he 
would not lean on General Miles." 

MILES ^S NOTIONS OF PROPRIETY. 

An idea of General Miles 's notions of the proprie- 
ties may be had from the following paragraphs in 
the memoir: v ^t| 

"General Burton, as I accidentally learned, which 
statement was afterwards verified by him, when de- 
ciding upon a casemate for me, was advised by Gener- 
al Miles to put me on the side of the fort occupied by 
the camp women. He said there was an impropriety 
in associating me with the families of the officers; 
but General Burton declined to offer me the indignity, 
and assigned me a casemate in the row with the offi- 
cers' wives. 

''One day an orderly came for me to go to the 
prison; hitherto an officer had always accompanied 
me past the sentinels. I thought nothing of it, but 
when we reached the guard room the captain on duty 



200 Some Truths of History. 

apologized for not coming in person, and told me 
General Miles had said a prisoner's wife had better 
come over with an orderly and unattended by an 
officer. It was a small matter to me, but these re- 
fined, kind-hearted gentlemen were unwilling to be 
misunderstood. General Miles, I heard, denied giv- 
ing the order, and the officers signed a statement to 
the effect that he had verbally given it before several 
witnesses after guard-mounting. I think he made no 
further denial." 

HE gossips V7ITH A SERVANT. 

On June the 2d, 1865, the general furnished addi- 
tional proof of his vigilance and efficiency as a jailer 
and detective in the following communication to the 
War Department: 

''Fort Monroe, June 2, 1865. 
"Col. E. W. Smith, Assistant Adj ut ant- General : 

' ' Colonel : I have just learned from a servant girl 
of Jeff Davis's, that went to Norfolk before Davis left 
the Clyde, that a servant of his, James Jones, col- 
ored, who left the Clyde soon after its arival here, 
has left here, going over the route via Raleigh, where 
his mother resides^ and said before he left he knew 
where two bags of money were concealed near where 
Davis was captured, amounting to $10,000, and that 
he was going to find it. 

"Respectfully, 

' ' Nelson A. Miles, 
"Brevet Major-General of Volunteers, Commanding." 



Some Truths of History. 201 

His next biography should, by all means, exhibit 
to the gaze of his admiring countrymen a picture of 
the General holding his tete-a-tete with "Jeff Davis's" 
colored servant girl. 

MILES TALKS ABOUT THE SHACKLING OF MR. DAVIS. 

And here is Mrs. Davis's account of an interview 
with General Miles, which is a very interesting and 
important contribution to the subject under dis- 
cussion : 

"One day General Miles sent his orderly for me to 
come to headquarters, and I went in fear and tremb- 
ling, lest some one had accused me of carrying deadly 
'weepons. ' He received me civilly, and then said he 
had sent for me to see the orders under which he 
had shackled Mr. Davis. To say that my blood ran 
cold is a faint expression of the thrill that went 
through me. He opened a large ledger book and 
showed me Mr. Stanton's order to him to adopt any 
means that would insure the prisoner's safety. I told 
him that I did not see his warrant in that order. He 
said: 'Mr. Stanton knew I was going to do it, and 
I thought it necessary.' " 

Mrs. Davis says this is quoted from notes taken im- 
mediately after the conversation. 

WAS IT NECESSARY? 

We have seen that Mr. Stanton's order to General 
Miles, through Mr. Dana, was to place manacles and 
fetters upon the hands and feet of Jefferson Davis 



202 Some Truths of History. 

and Clement C. Clay, Jr., "whenever he might think 
it advisable in order to render their imprisonment 
more secure. ' ' Mr. Dana had been sent by Mr. Stan- 
ton to Fortress Monroe authorized to give orders to 
have the prisoners placed in irons, but we have seen 
that,, after his arrival at the fort, he telegraphed to 
Mr. Stanton : ' ' I have not given orders to have them 
placed in irons, as General Halleck seemed opposed 
to it; but General Miles is instructed to have fetters 
ready if he thinks them necessary." It is evident 
that he was authorized by Stanton to have Mr. Davis 
and Mr. Clay — especially Mr. Davis — put in irons, 
but as General Halleck was opposed to it, instead of 
having it done, he, before returning to Washington, 
wrote out the order, the facsimile of which I have 
shown you, leaving it for General Miles alone to de- 
cide whether the manacling of the aged prisoners, or 
either of them, was necessary or not. He was to act 
entirely of his own volition in the matter. He said 
he "thought it necessary" that "Davis" should be 
manacled, and the day after that order was left with 
him — the 23d day of May, 1865 — Jefferson Davis 
was put in irons. 

Was it necessary to place manacles and fetters upon 
the hands or feet of Jefferson Davis to render his 
imprisonment secure? If there ever comes a time 
when answer to this question is seriously asked and 
desired by any one, let the assistant secretary of war 
himself, first of all, be quoted in reply. In the tele- 



Some Truths of History. 203 

gram already alluded to, which Mr. Dana sent from 
Fortress Monroe to Mr. Stanton at one o'clock, p. m., 
on the 22d day of May, 1865, he said : 

"The arrangements for the security of the prison- 
ers seem to me as complete as could be desired. Each 
one occupies the inner room of a casemate ; the win- 
dow is heavily barred. A sentry stands within before 
each of the doors leading into the outer room. These 
doors are to be grated, but are now secured by bars, 
fastened on the outside. Two other sentries stand 
outside of these doors. An officer is also constantly 
on duty in the outer room, whose duty it is to see 
his prisoner every fifteen minutes. The outer door 
of all is locked on the outside, and the key is kept 
exclusively by the general officer of the guard. Two 
sentries are also stationed without that door ; a strong 
line of sentries cut off all access to the vicinity of the 
casemates. Another line is stationed on the top of 
the parapet overhead, and a third line is posted across 
the moats on the counterscarp, opposite the places of 
confinement. The casemates on each side and be- 
tween those occupied by the prisoners are used as 
guard-rooms, and soldiers are always there. A lamp 
is constantly kept burning in each of the rooms." 

To prevent his escape from such a place of confine- 
ment, so guarded, did General Miles think it necessary 
to place manacles upon a feeble old man, broken with 
cares and sorrows and suffering! And Mrs. Davis 
records that "Mr. Stanton is said to have gone down 



204 Some Truths of History. 

and peered through the grating at the tortured man," 
and that General Miles was said to have ''favored his 
friends with peeps at him when they were at all curi- 
ous. * * 

Answer to the question I have asked may also be 
found in the book entitled "Men and Measures of 
Half a Century," by the Hon. Hugh McCulloch, Sec- 
retary of the Treasury from 1865 to 1869, who had 
the heart and the courage to visit Mr. Davis in prison, 
and to write these words: ''I felt that he had been 
barbarously treated. Chains were unnecessary, and 
the constant presence of the guards in the casemate 
must have been, to a sensitive man, worse than solitary 
confinement, which is now regarded as too inhuman 
to be inflicted upon the greatest criminals." 

"He seemed to be neither depressed in spirits nor 
soured in temper," wrote Mr. McCulloch; and in the 
book entitled "The Prison Life of Jefferson Davis,'' 
consisting, for the most part,, of the diary of Dr. 
Craven, the United States Army surgeon who was 
Mr. Davis's attending physician at the fort, we find 
these words: "Mr. Davis is remarkable for the kind- 
ness of his nature and fidelity to friends. Of none 
of God's creatures does he seem to wish or speak un- 
kindly." The words of these two gentlemen. North- 
ern men both, are corroborative of Mrs. Davis's 
words : "He was bitter at no earthly creature. ' ' 



Some Truths of History. 205 

why he resisted the shackling. 

It is well known that Mr. Davis resisted the man- 
acling of his limbs with all the strength that the des- 
peration aroused by a sense of the great and needless 
indignity about to be inflicted on him lent to his slight 
frame, and that it was accomplished only after he 
was overpowered and held prostrate by four men, who 
sat on him while blacksmiths put on the irons which, 
ere they were taken off, had literally worn the skin 
away. To Dr. Craven Mr. Davis, speaking of that 
dark and damning deed, said: 

"My physical condition rendered it obvious that 
there could be no idea that fetters were needful to the 
security of my imprisonment. It was clear, therefore, 
that the object was to offer an indignity, both to my- 
self and to the cause I represented — not the less 
sacred to me because covered with the pall of a mil- 
itary disaster. It was for this reason I resisted as a 
duty to my faith, to my countrymen, and to myself. 
It was for this reason I courted death from the mus- 
kets of the guard. The officer of the day (Captain 
Titlow) prevented that result, and, indeed, he behaved 
like a man of good feeling." 

A REFINEMENT OF TORTURE. 

You have noted Mr. Dana's statement, in his tele- 
gram to Mr. Stanton which I have quoted, that a lamp 
was always kept burning and a sentry always kept 
standing in the room where Mr. Davis was confined: 



206 Some Truths of History. 

and you remember Mr. McCulloch's comment on this 
ever-present sentry. The horrors of such a situation 
were thus described by Mr. Davis himself, in conver- 
sation with Dr. Craven : 

''The consciousness that the Omniscient Eye rests 
upon us in every situation is the most consoling and 
beautiful belief of religion ; but to have a human eye 
riveted on you in every moment of waking or sleep- 
ing, sitting, walking, or lying down, is a refinement 
of torture on anything the Comanches or Spanish 
Inquisition ever dreamed. * * * The human eye 
forever fixed upon you is the eye of a spy, or enemy, 
gloating in the pain and humiliation which itself 
creates. * * * This torture of being watched 
begins to prey on my reason. The lamp burning in 
my room all night would seem a torment devised by 
some one who had intimate knowledge of my habits, 
my custom having been through life never to sleep 
except in total darkness." 

The sentry was removed from his room finally, but, 
through the aperture made by a sliding panel in the 
door, the torturing espionage was continued by day 
and night, without a moment's cessation, while the 
lamplight continued to shoot its rays all night long 
into his throbbing eyeballs (one of them already 
sightless from neuralgia) , and such short and troubled 
snatches of sleep as he could get Avere broken by the 
noise made by the frequent changing of the guard 



Some Truths of History. 207 

at his door and the sentinels' steady tramp in the 
corridor. 

But it was not from the torture inflicted on his 
body,, great as that was, that his keenest anguish 
came. *' Bitter tears," he said, "have been shed by 
the gentle, and stern reproaches have been made by 
the magnanimous, on account of the heavy fetters 
riveted upon me while in a stone casemate and sur- 
rounded by a strong guard, but these were less ex- 
cruciating than the mental agony my captors were 
able to inflict." 

THE POWER THAT SUSTAINED HIM. 

How did he endure it all? What upheld him? 
How did this aged, weak and suffering man survive 
all the racking of mind and body inflicted on him 
during two years of captivity? In his o\^ti words, 
in the letters written from his prison cell to the wife 
of his bosom (for he was permitted, after some 
months, to write to her, under restrictions) may be 
found the answer to this question: 

''Bowed down by anxiety for my family" — thus 
he wrote — "suffering from neuralgia and dyspepsia, 
covered by the dusky cloud of falsehood and injus- 
tice, I am supported by the conscious rectitude of my 
course, and humbly and grievously acknowledging 
my many and grievous sins against God, can confi- 
dently look to His righteous judgment for vindication 
in the matters whereof I am accused by man. 

"Be not alarmed by speculative reports concern- 



208 Some Truths of History. 

ing my condition ; yon can rely on my fortitude, and 
God has given me much of resignation to His blessed 
will. * * * It is true that my strength has 
greatly failed me, and the loss of sleep has created a 
morbid excitability, but an unseen hand has sus- 
tained me, and a peace the world could not give and 
has not been able to destroy, will, I trust, uphold 
me to meet with resignation whatever may befall me. 
*'I have lately read 'The Suffering Saviour,' by 
the Rev. Dr. Krumacher, and was deeply impressed 
by the dignity, the sublime patience of the model of 
Christianity, as contrasted with the brutal vindictive- 
ness of unregenerate man. * * * Misfortune 
should not depress us, as it is only crime that can 
degrade. Beyond this world there is a sure retreat 
for the oppressed; and posterity justifies the mem- 
ory of those who fall unjustly. * * * q^p jj^- 
juries cease to be grievous in proportion as Christian 
charity enables us to forgive those who trespass 
against us, and to pray for our enemies. * * * 
Separated from my friends of this world, my Heav- 
enly Father has drawn nearer to me. * * * The 
best resource of patience is the assurance that the 
world is governed by infinite wisdom, and that He 
who rules only permits injustice for some counterbal- 
ancing good of which the sufferer cannot judge. * * 
Fear not what man can do ; it is God disposes. Now 
I am shut up, and slander runs riot to destroy my 
fair repute, but any investigation must redeem my 
character and leave it for a-n inheritance to my chil- 



Some Truths of History. 209 

dren, which, in aftertimes, they will not be the worse 
for possessing. The treatment I have received will 
be compared with my treatment of others, and it will 
be the reverse of the picture my enemies have drawn. 
Conscious rectitude is a great support to the sufferer, 
whatever may be the form or end of the afflictions. 

* * * I am sustained by a power I know not of. 

* * * "With the communion of the church, I am 
not alone, nor without remembrance that the burden 
is not permitted to exceed the strength. I live and 
hope." 

In these words, quoted from letters written at dif- 
ferent times,, we have the secret of the illustrious cap- 
tive 's survival of his imprisonment. They show us 
how it was that, through all the privation and suf- 
fering to which he was subjected, he lived and hoped. 
He felt within him that peace above all earthly dig- 
nities that a still and quiet conscience gives, and of 
which no storm and stress of earth could rob him. 
He knew, as we know, that whatever record leapt to 
light, he never would be shamed. The desire, too, to 
live and vindicate to posterity and for his family his 
conduct and the cause which he represented, helped 
to sustain him, and, fortunately for the truth's sake, 
he did live to accomplish that desire most triumph- 
antly by his history of the Confederate government. 

A SINCERE CHRISTIAN. 

Dr. Craven, in ^'Tlie Prison Life of Jefferson 
Davis,' ^ says: 

(14) 



210 Some Truths of History. 

''There were moments, while speaking on religions 
subjects, in which Mr. Davis impressed me more than 
any professor of Christianity I have ever heard. 
There v/as a vital earnestness in his discourse, a clear, 
almost passionate grasp in his faith ; and the thought 
would frequently recur that a belief capable of con- 
soling such sorrows as his,, possessed, and thereby evi- 
denced, a reality — a substance — which no sophistry of 
the infidel could discredit." 

"And let me here remark," says the doctor, **that, 
despite a certain exterior cynicism of manner, no pa- 
tient has ever crossed my path who, suffering so much 
himself, appeared to feel so warmly and tenderly for 
others. Sickness, as a general rule, is sadly selfish, 
its own pains and infirmities occupying too much 
of its thoughts. With Mr. Davis, however, the rule 
did not work, or rather he was an exception calling 
attention to its general truth." 

This was Jefferson Davis. This was the man upon 
whom, while he was a prisoner in a stone casemate 
and surrounded by a strong guard, heavy fetters were 
riveted by order of General Nelson A. Miles. <,^ 

A DEED DELIBERATELY DONE. 

The evidence shows that the deed done by General 
Miles on that fateful 23d day of May, 1865, was done 
voluntarily and deliberately, on his own responsibility 
solely. He knew, before he did it, and while 
he was doing it, that it would be a deed that 
would pass into history, never to be obliterated 



Some Truths of History. 211 

from its pages. It is most probable that he 
was actuated largely by the desire to go into history 
as the man who put Jefferson Davis in irons. The 
desire has been achieved. He has so gone into his- 
tory, and will so live there for all time to come. It 
may be that now he would have it otherwise — now 
that he has realized that shame, and not fame, will 
be his everlasting portion for that deed — but history 
is inexorable and cannot be evaded. When a general 
of the army of a Christian country does a deed like 
that, he should not, if he could, be suffered to escape 
history. He should not be allowed to escape the con- 
sequences of a disgraceful act, if it were possible for 
him to do so. But such escape is impossible, for 
"our acts our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal 
shadows that walk by us still." The shadow of that 
deed is projected ineffaceably into distant ages. All 
great Neptune's ocean cannot wash away the stain 
it left upon the name of its author. He is the com- 
manding general of the United States army, and has 
been made a Doctor of Laws by Harvard University, 
but he can reach no position so exalted that that shad- 
ow will not fall, a veritable Frankenstein, athwart 
his path.^ 

GRANT CONTRASTED WITH MILES. 

"When Mrs. Davis went to Washino^ton to seek an 



1. General Miles has published a large volume of "Personal Recollec- 
tions," but it does not appear therefrom that he has any recollection of 
the manacling of Mr. Davis. From nothing in his book does it appear that 
General Miles ever met Jefferson Davis, or is aware that such a man ever 
lived. But he cannot down his damning deed in that way. 



212 Some Truths of History. 

interview with President Johnson for the purpose of 
effecting some amelioration of her husband's condi- 
tion, she received a message from General Grant say- 
ing he would be glad if he could serve her in any 
way. She had an appointment to meet the general, 
but was unavoidably prevented from keeping it, and 
he,, after waiting an hour for her, instructed his aide- 
de-camp to deliver that message to her, with the expla- 
nation that another engagement prevented him from 
waiting longer. 

It is not out of place to recall here, in connection 
with his courteous conduct towards Mrs. Davis, the 
fact that, when an order was issued for the arrest of 
General Lee, General Grant instantly repaired to 
Washington and protested against it, and it is un- 
derstood that he said emphatically that if General 
Lee were arrested — if the parole given to the Con- 
federate commander and his officers was violated — 
he would resign his commission in the army. The 
order for the arrest of General Lee and other Con- 
federate officers, some of whom had already been ar- 
rested, was rescinded. 

Mrs. Davis says that neither she nor Mr. Davis 
ever forgot General Grant's courtesy towards her. 
She doubtless felt it all the more sensibly because it 
afforded such a contrast to the deportment of him 
who is now the commanding general of the army, of 
whom she says : 

"We excused much to General Miles, whose oppor- 
tunities to learn the habits of refined people were said 



Some Truths of History. 213 

to have been few, and his sectional feeling was very 
bitter, but that he should not have been moved by the 
evident physical suffering and mental anguish of his 
prisoner, and should have devised ingenious tortures 
for him, we could not understand. ****** 
''Men may be forgiven who, actuated by prejudice, 
exhibit bitterness in the first hours of their triumph ; 
but what excuse can be offered for one who, in cold 
blood, deliberately organizes tortures to be inflicted,, 
and superintends for over a year their application to 
the quivering form of an emaciated, exhausted, help- 
less prisoner, who, the whole South proudly remem- 
bers, though reduced to death's door, unto the end 
neither recanted his faith, fawned upon his perse- 
cutor, nor pleaded for mercy. ' ' 
I When they shall meet at compt, before the Great 
5 Assize, who would not be Jefferson Davis, the patient, 
\ suffering captive, rather than Nelson A. Miles, the 
I vengeful, torturing captor? 

HE WAS THEIR LEADER. 

Why was Mr. Davis so cruelly, so barbarously 
treated? Simply and solely because he obeyed the 
call of the people of the South, his own people, to be 
their leader in the war they fought for the right of 
self-government — the war they fought in defense of 
the principle upon which the government of the 
United States was founded, the principle laid down 
in the Declaration of Independence — "that govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the consent of 



214 Some Truths op History. 

the governed and are instituted among men to secure 
their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness, and that whenever any form of 
government becomes destructive of or fails to secure 
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 
abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying 
its foundation on such principles, and organizing its 
powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely 
to effect their safety and happiness." 

THE two sides. 

In 1861 the American Union was composed of thir- 
ty-three States, joined in a voluntary political associa- 
tion, partnership, or government, styled ''The United 
States of America."^ The people of eleven of these 
States, numbering about 5,000,000,, having found that, 
under that government, their safety and happiness, 
their peace and tranquility, were constantly and 
seriously threatened, and disturbed instead of being 
secured, decided to institute a new government, one 
that to them seemed more likely than the existing one 
to effect their safety and happiness. In accordance 
with the principle enunciated by the Declaration of 
Independence, which I have quoted, they instituted 
such new government, which was styled "The Con- 
federate States of America;" and, in defiance and 
subversion of that principle, the people of the other 

1. "I consider the Union a great political partnership." — Henry Clay. 
"Our Confederacy is perfectly illustrated by the terms and principles gov- 
erning a common co-partnership." — Inaugural address of President Wm. 
Henry Harrison. 



Some Truths of History. 215 

States of the Union, numbering about 22,000,000, said 
that the people of the eleven States did not have the 
right to institute a new government to secure their 
happiness, and made war against the people of the 
eleven States to compel them to renounce and abolish 
the government of their choice and come back and 
remain under the government from which they had 
withdrawn because it had ceased to secure to them 
the ends for which it was instituted. 

So it was that there came about the war between 
the States; eleven on one side, with 5,000,000 people, 
fighting for the principle of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence on which the government of the United 
States was itself founded; and twenty-two on the 
other side, with 22,000,000 people, fighting against it. 
The 22,000,000 overcame the 5,000,000, after four 
years' fighting, and the barbarous treatment of Jef- 
ferson Davis was due, as I have said, to the fact that 
he was the leader of the vanquished side. He was 
charged with having committed treason against the 
twenty-two States in joining the eleven States in their 
struggle to maintain the principle of the Declaration 
of Independence, but as, in doing so, he acted in con- 
formity to the will and in obedience to the call of 
his own State, and as one State cannot commit treason 
against another State, the absurdity of the charge is 
apparent. Every well-informed person knew that it 
had no foundation in law or in fact. Unless the 
State of Mississippi could be lawfully convicted of 
treason against coequal, associate States, Jefferson 



216 Some Truths of History. ^ 

Davis, a citizen of that State, could not be lawfully 
convicted of treason for remaining loyal to Mississippi 
instead of transferring his allegiance to the States 
that were making war on her. 

WOULD NEVER TRY HIM. 

At the end of an imprisonment of two years, Mr. 
Davis was released on bail, the bond being $100,000, 
and his bondsmen were Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith 
and Cornelius Vanderbilt, all citizens of New York. 
He was never brought to trial for "treason" or any- 
thing else, though he eagerly wished and constantly 
urged a trial. The United States government would 
never put to the test of an investigation, in accordance 
with the Constitution and laws of the land, the ques- 
tion whether or not he had committed treason against 
that government. It was a test he greatly desired, 
and he was greatly disappointed at the government's 
declining it. Had he been tried for treason the issue 
presented to the Supreme Court of the United States 
would have been precisely the same which was argued 
by Calhoun and "Webster, precisely the same which 
was fought, by Lee and Grant. That issue required 
an answer to the question: Did the States have a 
right to secede? For if the States had no right to 
secede, Jefferson Davis was a traitor. If they had 
a right to secede, he was a patriot. This question 
the political heads of the government feared to submit 
to its own tribunal, well remembering that in the 
Dred Scott decision that tribunal itself had placed 



Some Truths of History. 217 

the seal of constitutionality upon the principles for 
which the Southern statesmen and people stood. By 
the release, without trial, of Mr. Davis, the world was 
informed that the United States government feared 
to imperil in the courts of reason what it had gained 
on the field of battle, and the result was a judgment 
by default, against the United States, that whereas 
the right of secession now no longer exists, neverthe- 
less, and notwithstanding, the right of secession did 
exist, and Mr. Davis was not a traitor, but a patriot. 

IT CLEARS UP THE QUESTION. 

I think that the evidence submitted herewith 
"clears up" the question as to the responsibility of 
General Nelson A. Miles for the shackling of Jeffer- 
son Davis. May its dissemination and its perpetua- 
tion in the pages of history make for humanity by 
serving to deter some future Miles from torturing 
some other helpless prisoner. 



218 Some Truths of History. 



[From The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, March 9, 1902.] 
AN OLD MAN ELOQUENT 



WHO IS A BELATED CHAMPION OF THE DECLARATION. 



Washington, March 7. — The most remarkable and 
interesting figure in the United States Senate to-day- 
is Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts, by reason of his age, 
the mental and physical vigor that accompanies it, 
his long senatorial career, and his position in oppo- 
sition to that of his party on the Philippine question, 
which has been the all-absorbing theme in the Senate 
this winter. 

Mr. Hoar has been at issue with his party on that 
question from the beginning. "With great earnestness 
and with eloquence he opposes and condemns the 
imperialistic, autocratic, unrighteous, un-American 
and brutally cruel policy of the United States govern- 
ment with regard to the Philippine people. He is 
a thorn in the sides of its advocates, and a plague to 
them. In the course of the recent debate on that 
subject in the Senate he exposed the hollo wness of 
one of the much vaunted claims made for that policy, 
and perforated and riddled it with a few blistering, 
burning sentences which I incorporate herewith, that 
they may have, through the columns of The Tele- 



Some Truths of History. 219 

graph, a much wider reading than they are likely to 
have in the pages of the Congressional Record. 

Mr. Piatt of Connecticut and Mr. Beveridge of 
Indiana were the personages to whom Mr. Hoar de- 
voted his special attention on the occasion referred to, 
though Mr. Beveridge 's appearance on the stage, as 
will be seen, was of brief and by no means brilliant 
duration. Mr. Piatt had been reading statements 
from some of the governors of the Philippine islands 
to the effect that the people there were well satisfied 
with the American rule, contented with the present 
condition, and really happy in it; that, in short, it is 
a delightful condition. In reply to this Mr. Hoar 
pointed to the fact that the governors quoted by the 
Connecticut senator are, every one of them, appointed 
by American power and paid by American money, 
and he asked: "Does the senator think that certifi- 
cates as to the condition of public sentiment when 
our revolutionary war broke out, or even when it 
had been going on for a year, made to the British 
Parliament by the Tory governors of that time, would 
have been accepted anywhere as of great historical 
value?" 

Then alluding to the statement from the provincial 
governors that the Filipinos are all growing in appre- 
ciation of our institutions, Mr. Hoar asked: ''What 
are those institutions of ours they appreciate?" It 
was just at this point that Mr. Beveridge put in his 
oar and made his contribution to the discussion. In 



220 Some Truths of History. 

reply to Mr. Hoar's inquiry, Mr. Beveridge rashly 
answered: ''Free schools," and as quick as a flash 
came this response from the Massachusetts senator: 

"Free schools, cries out an enthusiastic youth on 
my left. Free schools! What kind of free schools? 
We teach citizenship in our free schools. We have 
an American flag over the school-house. Can they 
teach citizenship in the Filipino free schools, or have 
a Filipino flag — the flag of the country — hanging 
over the school-house? Can they read to those schol- 
ars, as was suggested during the debate, the Declara- 
tion of Independence, or the great amendments to 
our Constitution, and tell them there is the great 
foundation of citizenship? Can the little boy of ten 
or fifteen in a class in those free schools say that 
he loves liberty; that all men are created equal, and 
that governments must derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed? The poor little fellow 
will have to be sent first to the coal bin and then to 
the penitentiary. These are what are called free 
schools, and that is the way they are to teach appre- 
ciation of our institutions. 

"What do the children in our free schools do? 
They do not sit on Washington's birthday. They 
read the farewell address, but you might as well put 
a spark of fire into a powder mine as to have Wash- 
ington's farewell address read in one of those free 
schools where they teach American institutions. 

* ' The free school here at home does not keep on the 



Some Truths of History. 221 

Fourth of July, but the Filipino school, if it does not 
keep, cannot at least have anything said such as we 
say here on the Fourth of July. I wonder if they 
speak pieces in the free schools in the Philippine is- 
lands. When we were young we used to speak a 
speech made by a Revolutionary villain named Pat- 
rick Henry, 'Give me liberty or give me death.' 

'*I wonder if they speak that piece we used to speak 
in our humble way — Chatham's famous speech, the 
one finest oratoric utterance in all human history 
since the time of Greece — ' Sir, I rejoice that America 
has resisted.' I should like to hear a little chap out 
in a Philippine school-house speak that. I wonder if 
Warren's address to his troops is one of the ways in 
which they teach the little fellow to appreciate Amer- 
ican institutions: 

''Stand! The ground's your own, my braves; 
Will you give it up to slaves?" 

''Or Marco Bozzarris's address to his soldiers, which 
we used to know by heart? I wonder if they would 
allow the little fellow to speak a Fourth of July ora- 
tion — and I have no doubt he has delivered a great 
many — by my honorable friend, the senator from In- 
diana (Mr. Beveridge). 

' ' I will venture to say, without having read them — 
and I should be a wiser and better man if I had — 
that there is not a Filipino free school in which any 
Fourth of July address he ever delivered in his life, 
or until within the last five years, or any important 



222 Some Truths of History. 

political speech he ever delivered in his life, or -iintil 
within the last four or five years, would be allowed 
to be uttered by the school-boy." 

Thus keenly, with words like rapier thrusts, did 
the old man eloquent of Massachusetts pierce through 
and through the mask of liberal, benevolent and phil- 
anthropic professions with which the Republican 
party accompanies its course of force and fraud in 
the Philippines. Thus vividly, with words like light- 
ning flashes, did he lay bare to the gaze of all the 
world all the hollow mockery, all the hideous hypocrisy 
of those professions. Mr. Beveridge shrank back in 
silence. He had no word of reply. He was dumb. 
Mr. Piatt did venture to keep up the discussion a 
little further, the result of which was as complete a 
discomfiture for him as that which had befallen his 
rash and luckless co-imperialist, the "enthusiastic 
youth" from Indiana. 

It was said of the little boy, whose nose was dislo- 
cated in consequence of his having been too rashly 
familiar with the dangerous end of a mule, that he 
would not be pretty any more but he would have 
more sense. Mr. Beveridge will hardly be so daring 
in entering the lists to have a tilt with Mr. Hoar 
hereafter, but what he loses in daring he will make 
up in caution. 

Mr. Hoar is a Republican, but not an imperialist. 
He has been in the Senate thirty years and is nearly 
eighty years old. It is refreshing to see how vigorous 



Some Truths of History. 223 

he still is in mind and body, and it is an exhilarating, 
inspiring sight to see him now using his faculties so 
earnestly and bravely in behalf of the principles of 
the Declaration of Independence and genuine Amer- 
ican constitutional liberty. It was not always so. 
The truth of history must be written. Time was — 
from 1861 to 1865, and later — when he did not so 
use them, and the policy of government by force upon 
which the United States then embarked is what has 
landed and is keeping an American army and Amer- 
ican provincial governors and satraps in the Philip- 
pine islands to-day. Now, in the late evening of his 
life, Mr. Hoar returns to the principles from which 
he and the whole North departed then ; but the North, 
despite his pleading, despite his eloquence, despite 
his arguments — unanswerable save by force alone — 
the North, alas! returns not with him. The North 
adopted the policy of answering argument with force 
then, and has become enamored of it. Force sup- 
planted the Declaration and the Constitution then as 
it is supplanting them now. The North tasted blood 
then, drank deep of it, v/aded through it to power and 
dominion; and now she must have more blood, that 
she may have more power, and more dominion; reck- 
oning not, the while, of the bitter consequence, the 
ruinous recoil of it all upon herself at the last. 

Mr. Hoar does not seem yet to have realized that the 
republic — the true American Union — the Union 
founded upon the doctrine that governments derive 



224 Some Truths of History. 

their just powers from the consent of the governed — 
was overthrown in this country when eleven of the 
States of that Union were compelled by force of arms 
to abandon their attempt to maintain that doctrine 
near forty years ago, and to yield themselves to the 
superior physical force of twenty-two other States. 
When the army of the North passed beyond the Po- 
tomac in 1861, the Rubicon of the Republic was 
crossed.^ 

That Mr. Hoar, though nearly an octogenarian, is 
still an intellectual athlete, is shown by the ease with 
which he grapples with and overthrows in debate the 
champions of the bloody propaganda of imperialism 
in the senatorial arena; and though he is a belated 
champion of the Declaration of Independence, his 
stand now for that great charter of human liberty 
and foundation stone of the original Ameican Union 
is a spectacle for admiration, unavailing though it 
must be. It is too late. Down to 1861 the doctrine 
of government by force was a monster of hideous 
mien to all Americans. But in that fatefully epochal 
year Mr. Hoar — Massachusetts — the North — took that 
doctrine to their embrace, and devoted themselves, 
during the next four years, to the overthrow and de- 
struction of the doctrine of government by consent of 
the governed — the doctrine of the Declaration of In- 
dependence — the doctrine on which the American 
Union was founded. 



1. "The Republic perished" — wrote Charles O'Conor, the foremost Amer- 
ican lawyer of his time — "on the day that McDowell moved on to Richmond." 



Some Truths of History. 225 

They succeeded, and the South and liberty lay 
bleeding together. The sword pierced the hearts of 
both, and side by side they lay in the dust. Govern- 
ment by consent of the governed went down at Appo- 
mattox, and on its ruins and in its stead government 
by force — the doctrine that might makes right — was 
enthroned, and the Republican party and the North 
have ever since worshiped at its shrine with an infat- 
uation which cannot now be overcome nor shaken. 
It is too late now for Mr. Hoar to appeal to them or 
protest in the name of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and its doctrine of government by consent of the 
governed. That doctrine and that document were 
shot to death thirty-seven years ago on the soil of the 
State that gave birth to them — on the bleeding bosom 
of the very State that gave George Washington and 
Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry to the world. 

The republic — the Republic of Washington and 
Jefferson, of Hancock and Adams, the republic of 
Mr. Hoar's fathers — that republic is gone. It per- 
ished under the fire of the "boys in blue" of 1861, 
just as the Filipino and his dream of freedom are 
perishing under the fire of the ''boys in blue" of 
1902. The lust of dominion destroyed it then, just 
as the lust of dominion is now destroying a brave lit- 
tle republic in South Africa, and massacreing a peo- 
ple in the far off isles of the Orient who have dared 
to strike for liberty and the right of self-government. 
And when its awful ghost — the ghost of that republic 

(15) 



226 Some Truths op History. 

of his fathers — rises at imperial banquet boards and 
stalks through congressional halls, would that Mr. 
Hoar — for the sake of the noble, gallant fight he is 
making now — could say to it, ''Thou canst not say 
I did it ; never shake thy gory locks at me. ' ' History 
will not permit him to say that, but it will record one 
bright page for him when it shall tell of the Filipinos' 
struggle for liberty one hundred and twenty-five years 
after the Declaration of Independence. 



Some Truths of History. 227 



[From The Atlanta Journal, July 3, 1902.] 
STEPHENS VS. EOOSEYELT. 



WAS THE SOUTHERN CAUSE THE CAUSE OF ANARCHY, AS 
CHARGED BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT? 



How Alexander H. Stephens Answered the Charge 

and Predicted Imperialism as the Ultimate 

Result of the War Between the States. 



Recent utterances by the President of the United 
States coupling the cause of the Confederate States 
with anarchy call to mind a discussion years ago be- 
tween Alexander H. Stephens and some Northern gen- 
tlemen who were visiting him at his home, Liberty 
Hall, in Crawfordville. 

Making speeches like some of those lately made 
by Mr. Roosevelt may be his way of ''wiping out the 
last vestige of sectionalism." It was not William 
McKinley's way. ''The last vestige," etc., has been 
"wiped out," and "buried" ever so many times, but 
it is always resurrected and wiped in again when the 
exigencies of the Republican party or of Republican 
politicians seem to require it. It will be ' ' wiped out ' ' 
again when the country becomes involved in another 
foreign war and soldiers are again wanted from the 
South. It will be carefully concealed from 'sdew then 



228 Some Truths of History. 

and will remain so while the war lasts and the soldiers 
are wanted. There wasn't a trace of it anywhere in 
sight four years ago, when Confederate old Joe 
Wheeler was fighting Spaniards and saving the Amer- 
ican army from disastrous retreat in Cuba, when 
Micah Jenkins was illustrating South Carolina there 
and showing that he was the worthy son of a heroic 
Confederate sire, when Worth Bagley, of North Caro- 
lina (the first American officer killed in the Spanish- 
American war), gave up his young life there; when 
Tom Brumby, of Georgia, was by Dewey's side at 
Manila, and Hobson, of Alabama, was daring death 
in Santiago bay. Nothing was too good to say of the 
South then, for w^ar was on and her sons were wanted 
on the firing line. And they were there. The sectional 
hue and cry and the bloody shirt were relieved from 
duty and sectionalism "buried" then. 

But now all is changed. Grim-visaged war has 
smoothed his wrinkled front and hushed his stern 
alarums, the piping time of peace has come, and the 
President of the United States, who whilom mounted 
the barbed steed to fright the souls of fearful adver- 
saries, now leaps nimbly into the political arena, 
snatches the lately buried corpse from the grave to 
which (as we were told) it had been consigned for- 
ever, hugs it in his arms and warms it into strenuous 
life again. For partisan purposes he fiercely fans the 
paling ashes and would stir the slumbering fires of 



Some Truths of History. 229 

sectionalism into lurid flame once more. Ah, no, that 
was not William McKinley's way. 

No longer need for them in the battle 's van, so now, 
according to this president, Wheeler was an anar- 
chist ; and Bagley, Brumby, Jenkins and Hobson, sons 
of anarchists, for their fathers were Confederates and 
fought, like Wheeler, for "anarchy" in 1861. Ac- 
cording to Theodore Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee and 
Stonewall Jackson, Johnston, Beauregard, Hampton, 
and all their glorious company, were anarchists, while 
Jefferson Davis was the arch-anarchist of them all, 
and an infamous traitor — a Benedict Arnold — besides. 
Shades of the Mighty Dead! If this planet were still 
graced by your majestic presence what a pygmy in 
that presence would seem this ranting Rough Rider, 
drest by doleful chance in a little brief authority! 
With what ineffable derision would you regard the 
fantastic tricks he plays and the wild and whirling 
words he speaks! 

The assertion that anarchy would have ensued from 
the success of the Southern cause in 1861-65 is com- 
mon among Northern speakers and writers, most of 
whom, as well as the great mass of the Northern peo- 
ple are ill-informed about the Confederate States, as 
well as lamentably ignorant about American history 
generally. The idea that such would be the conse- 
quence of the triumph of that cause was industriously 
and artfully propagated by Northern political leaders 
with purposes of their own that could be served best 
by instilling it, as well as many others equally 



230 Some Truths of History. 

misleading, into the minds of the multitude. The 
truth is, it was only by fooling and misleading the 
Northern people that the Northern politicians suc- 
ceeded in bringing on the war between the North and 
South. Greg, the English author, recognized this 
truth, and in his history of the United States says: 
''The South was forced and the North tricked into 
war." Nearly all wars are brought on through the 
deceiving of the people by ambitious rulers and self- 
seeking politicians. 

There was a time when there prevailed in the South 
what Mr. Lecky, the English historian, truly says was 
"a hideous orgie of anarchy, violence, unrestrained 
corruption, undisguised, ostentatious, insulting rob- 
bery, such as the world had scarcely ever seen. ' ' That 
was the decade immediately following 1865; but the 
North was the creator and promoter — its leading 
statesmen were the high priests — of that ten years' 
anarchistic orgy. It was the result of the success of 
the Northern — not the Southern — cause. 

The visitors at Liberty Hall on the occasion to 
which I have referred were acquaintances and friends 
of Mr. Stephens in ante-bellum days, though not of 
like political faith with him, and that being their 
first meeting since those days, they were exchanging 
views, in a free and friendly way, about the war 
between the States, its causes, its character, its con- 
duct and its results. There was, naturally, much 
difference of opinion between them, and there was 
unreserved but perfectly courteous and respectful 



Some Truths of History. 231 

expression of that difference and of the reasons for 
it, wherever it existed. A discussion of that charac- 
ter under such circumstances was of course very in- 
teresting and instructive to one who had ears to hear. 

As the Northerners viewed the matter the responsi- 
bility for the war rested on the South, for resisting 
Mr. Lincoln's acts *Ho maintain the government," 
which they termed ''resisting the execution of the 
laws." Mr. Stephens held that the resistance was 
caused by the unconstitutional character of the acts, 
that the war was but a consequence of the unconsti- 
tutional measures adopted by Mr. Lincoln to main- 
tain a government over the people and States of the 
South against their interests and against their con- 
sent; that there would have been no war, with its 
scenes of slaughter and carnage, its devastations and 
conflagrations and desolations, but for those acts on 
the part of Mr. Lincoln, as President of the United 
States — acts for which no warrant was to be found 
in the Constitution and laws of the country.^ 

To this, one of the party, a gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts, who had the Roosevelt idea, replied that he 
admitted that if Mr. Lincoln had not done any of 
the things to which Mr. Stephens had referred there 

1. George Grote, the English historian — a republican in principle and 
strongly opposed to slavery — ia quoted by his biographer (who was his 
wife) as follows: "He once said in conversing with myself, in 1867, about 
the United States, 'I have outlived my faith in the eflQcacy of republican 
government regarded as a check upon "the vulgar passions in a nation, and 
I recognize the fact that supreme power lodged in their hands may be exer- 
cised quite as mischievously as by a despotic ruler like the first Napoleon. 
The conduct of the Northern States in the late conflict with the Southern 
states has led me to this conclusion, though it costs me much to avow 
it, even to mj-self.' " — "Personal Life of George Grote," p. 314. 



232 Some Truths of History. 

would have been no war, "and," he added, "there 
would have been no government left, either. General 
anarchy would have ensued, with burnings, slaugh- 
ters and butcheries ad libitum." 

I give Mr. Stephens's answer verbatim: "Let us 
see," said he. "You say general anarchy would have 
ensued. How so? Was not everything moving on 
peacefully and quietly throughout the Confederate 
States? Were there any indications of anarchy 
there? Were not the changes in their new Constitu- 
tion all of a conservative character? Did this fur- 
nish any evidence of a tendency to anarchy on their 
part? How was it in the Northern States? What 
was there to introduce anarchy there? You say no 
government would have been left. How so, I again 
inquire? Would not the federal government of all 
the States that saw fit to remain in the Union as it 
then stood have been left? Was there any hostile 
resistance or opposition to that? There certainly 
was not, nor was any designed. 

"But let us see further: Suppose the entire gov- 
ernment — the entire conventional federal government, 
I mean— had gone to pieces, gone into dissolution 
temporarily or permanently, who would have been 
injured even by that ? Would anybody have lost any- 
thing by it except the officeholders under it? And 
would any injury have occurred to them in such a 
catastrophe, further than the loss of their honors and 
salaries? Would not all the State governments have 
remained intact, clothed with all the powers of inher- 



Some Truths of History. 233 

ent sovereignty, to maintain order and law through- 
out their respective limits, just as they did before the 
Union was formed? Is it not to the State govern- 
ments, under our system, we look for all necessary 
protection and security against the approaches of an- 
archy? Had the general government the right to in- 
terfere in any way to prevent anarchy, or even an 
insurrection in a State, except at the request of the 
regularly constituted authorities of that State? Was 
not this government made by the States, and for their 
own several well-being ? In the event, therefore, of a 
total dissolution of the federal government — in the 
event that all the Northern States had quit as well 
as the Southern, who would have been hurt by it? 
Whence would have come the anarchy you speak of, 
w4th its burnings, slaughters and butcheries? 

' ' Would not the Southern States have had what the 
federal government was instituted to secure — ^peace 
and prosperity, with domestic tranquility? If not, 
whose business would it have been but their own? 
Would not the Northern States have had the same? 
If not, whose fault would it have been but their own ? 
What was the government or the Union made for, 
but the good, the peace, the prosperity and happiness 
of the people of all the States? And who were the 
proper judges of the best interests of the people of 
all the States? Were they the officers of the federal 
government, or the States who made it?^ If the 

1. Wendell Phillips, in New Bedford, Mass., in 1861, said that the 
States who think their peculiar institutions require a separate government, 
"have a right to decide that question without appealing to you or to me." 



234 Some Truths of History. 

Northern manufacturing and commercial States had 
been indirectly injured by the withdrawal of the 
Southern States, to the extent of the benefits of the 
Union to them secured by their association under it, 
who could be justly subject to blame for this loss 
but themselves, in their breach of the compact which 
was the bond of the Union which had secured these 
advantages to them?"^ 

If Mr. Roosevelt really believes what he says about 
anarchy in connection with the Confederate States, 
let him read these words (given precisely as they 
were uttered) of one of the profoundest and purest 
of American statesmen, and then answer them, not 
by mere dogmatic assertion, not in bronco-busting 
style and rough-rider rodomontade; but soberly, seri- 
ously, thoughtfully, dispassionately, in dignified, 
statesmanlike fashion — if he can. Let him know that, 
in reading them, he is reading the words of one who 
made the science of government the study of a long 
lifetime; one who, though he opposed the policy of 
secession in 1861, and did all he could to prevent its 
adoption then, never questioned the right of a State 
of the American Union to resort to that policy when- 
ever, in its own judgment, its own best interests re- 
quired it to do so — being in full accord, on that ques- 
tion, with the sentiments of the address issued by the 

1. "Secession was the enthronement of law, the interposition of political 
sovereignty between the people and illegal usurpation. It was not moboc- 
racy nor anarchy, but the appeal to Law, in its highest and most author- 
itative expression. There is not the remotest analogy, but irreconcilable 
opposition, between the claims of a mob and the deliberate action of a 
State, invoking its sovereignty."— J. L. M. Curry, in "The Southern States 
of the American Union," p. 236. 



Some Truths of History. 235 

eminent statesmen and jurists of New England who 
met in convention at Hartford in 1814, and with the 
sentiments of the address delivered by John Quincy 
Adams before the Nev/ York Historical Society in 
1839, in which address that distinguished statesman 
said that if the day should ever come when the States 
of the Union were "no longer attached by the mag- 
netism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies" 
it would be "far better for the people of the dis- 
united States to part in friendship from each other 
than to be held together by constraint ; and then, re- 
verting to the precedents which occurred at the for- 
mation and adoption of the Constitution, to form 
again a more perfect Union by dissolving that which 
could no longer bind, and to leave the separate parts 
to be re-united by the law of political gravitation to 
the center."^ 

Let President Roosevelt know that the words here 
quoted in answer to the assertion that the cause of the 
South was the cause of anarchy, are the words of one 
who has shown, beyond confutation, that it was the 
cause of constitutional liberty — the cause of the fed- 
erative principle of government against the principle 
of empire — the cause of the Grecian type of civiliza- 
tion against the Asiatic ; the words of one who, when 
the war between the States was over and the Confed- 
erate States overthrown, did all he could for the re- 

1. "The day did come; Heaven did not avert it; fraternal spirit did 
give way, and with good reason; for no men who had either feelings or 
interests would have borne longer with peril and provocation than th§ 
slave-holding States."— Charles Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, in "Fears For 
Democracy," p. 187. 



236 Some Truths of History. 

establishment, in the United States, of the principles 
on Avhich their government was founded by the Revo- 
lutionary fathers. Let him know that they are the 
words of one who has incontestably shown that in that 
war the Confederate States defended those principles 
and the United States attacked them, and that when 
the Confederate States were overthrown those prin- 
ciples were overthrown. 

Let him know that they are the words of one who 
wrote on history's enduring page, more than thirty 
years ago, that the cause of those who waged war on 
the Confederate States "involved the overthrow of 
the entire fabric of American free institutions and 
the erection of a centralized empire in its stead," and 
that ' ' the principles upon which they waged that war 
involved that final result, and will, unless abandoned, 
necessarily and inevitably lead to that ultimate re- 
sult." Let him look at this prediction and then look 
at the policy of empire upon which this country has 
already entered — at the imperial government estab- 
lished by the United States over eight million peo- 
ple of an alien race, eight thousand miles away; and 
at the burning, slaughtering and butchering by which 
that government is maintained. Eight million peo- 
ple, aspiring to and struggling for independence and 
the right of self-government, subjugated by a govern- 
ment on the opposite side of the globe that was found- 
ed on the principles of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence — a declaration which asserts that ''governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the gov- 



Some Truths of History. 237 

erned!" Eighty million people, of a republic found- 
ed on that doctrine, making war for the principle of 
despotism! With shot and shell, and fire and sword, 
and tortures horrible, forcing a government upon 
eight million people of a far distant land who are 
fighting for that doctrine ! What a spectacle for the 
world and for coming ages! 

But mark the precedent which the advocates of 
imperialism cite to-day in its justification. They 
point to the war waged against the Confederate States 
and ask in effect, what is the difference between forc- 
ing a government on eight million people on the other 
side of the Pacific, and forcing a government on five 
million people on the other side of the Potomac. In 
the words of the ablest of their number (Senator 
Spooner, of Wisconsin,), they say: ''We forced a 
government upon the people of the South against 
their will because we had the men and money to do 
it w^ith," and they argue that if it was right to do 
that it cannot be wrong to do the same as to the 
people of the Philippines. The force of the argument 
is not to be eluded by those who approve the forcing 
of a government upon the Southern people with an 
army of more than two and a half million men in 
1865. The war against the people of the Philippines 
is no more violative of the principles of the Declara- 
tion of Independence and of constitutional liberty 
than was the war against the Confederate States and 
the people of the South. Senator Spooner and his 
co-imperialists of to-day understand this perfectly, 



238 Some Truths of History. 

and they do not fail' to drive the point home in their 
argument with those who upheld the principle of gov- 
ernment b}'' force then and condemn it now. They 
say that the principle involved in the war on the Fili- 
pinos is the same that was involved in the war on the 
South — namely, the maintenance of the government 
of the United States. They cite the measures adopted 
to maintain government in the one instance as prece- 
dents for the measures adopted for the same object 
in the other instance. They cite the devastation, con- 
flagrations, desolations, all the atrocities of the war 
on the South as precedents for the burning, slaugh- 
tering and butchering in the Philippine islands. 
They find in the war on the Southern States all the 
precedents they need for the war on the Filipinos. 
It was and is all ' ' to maintain the government. ' ' And 
all that is needed to make it all right is to "have the 
men and money to do it with." Such is the gospel 
of imperialism, the whole of which is summed up in 
the text — "Might makes right." (Yet the truth re- 
mains — eternal, undying — that force can never de- 
cide the right or wrong of an issue, — can never deter- 
mine the truth or falsity of any abstract reason.) 

And, verily, it all shows that the principles upon 
which the war against the Confederate States was 
waged are marching on with giant strides, their ban- 
ner full high advanced, with the dire device, "Im- 
perialism, ' ' blazing in letters of blood-red hue all over 
its folds. Some who upheld them then, affrighted 
at what they now see is their plain portent — appalled 



Some Truths of History. 239 

at what they now see must, ''necessarily and inevita- 
bly," be their "ultimate result" — are striving to 
check their onward march; and who now can doubt 
that, ''unless abandoned," they will, as predicted by 
Alexander H. Stephens, "lead to the overthrow of the 
entire fabric of American free institutions and the 
erection of a centralized empire in its stead ?"^ 

And when it comes it will be but the consummation 
of the departure, in 1861, from the principles on 
which the republic was founded; — those principles 
the maintenance of which the Republican party, in its 
first National Convention, declared to be "essential to 
the preservation of our republican institutions." No 
republic can long survive the parting from the vital- 
izing principle which gave it birth. The great Amer- 
ican republic departed from that principle in 1861, 
and its ultimate subversion and the erection of an 
empire in its stead will be but the penalty for that 
parting, come it soon or come it late. It was an evil 
and a direful thing to do, and.Carlyle never wrote 
more truly than when he said: "Judgment for an 
evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, 
some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as 
death!" States and nations, as well as individuals, 
are subject to this inexorable law. 

The most conspicuous and eminent of those who, 
having taken part in the overthrow of the old Amer- 
ican ideals in 1861-65, are now pleading for their res- 

1. "It is true that republics have often been cradled in war, but more 
often they have met with a grave in that cradle."— Speech of Jefferson 
Davis in the House of Representatives, February, 1846, 



240 Some Truths of History. 

toration, is Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts; but 
though he spake with the tongues of men and of an- 
gels his words would fall unheeded upon the ears of 
a people who more than a third of a century ago 
embraced the doctrine of government by force, and 
who are now, as they were then, ' ' dazzled by military 
glory and delirious with the lust of conquest. ' ' They 
could no more turn back the swelling and bloody tide 
of imperialism than the wail of an infant in the throat 
of a volcano could stay the oncoming of the lava flood. 
All in vain does this venerable statesman — this old 
man eloquent — now invoke the old ideals. They 
were slain — they perished all — with the storm-cradled 
nation that fell at Appomattox. Their light was 
quenched in the blood and smoke of the battlefields 
of the war between the States, and we look without 
avail for the Promethean heat that can that light re- 
lume. Those old ideals were the grace and glory of 
a day that is dead, and will never come back to us. 
The perfume lingers, but the vase is forever shat- 
tered. 

Let the President read the words of the statesman, 
patriot and seer whom I have quoted here, and refute 
them with facts and reason instead of fanfaronade 
and rant, or cease his denunciation of Confederates 
as anarchists. Else let him go down in history as 
merely a blatant demagogue and partisan, ready and 
willing, whenever occasion served, to prostitute for 
party, rather than consecrate to country, the high 
office in which the grievous chance of an anarchist 
assassin's bullet placed him. 



Some Truths op History. 241 



SOME PRESIDENTIAL APPRECIATIONS. 



I. 

BY A UNITED STATES SENATOR. 

''I know, sir, that we must make many allowances 
for that remarkable man, and especially must we not 
expect from him the language of moderation when 
dealing with the character and the motives of his 
political opponents. We must not judge the Presi- 
dent in his moments of oratorical ferocity or by the 
way he ejaculates his parts of speech when the maniac 
frenzy of battle is in his blood. 

"The President is not vindictive, he is simply 
strenuous ; and these outbursts are due to that abound- 
ing animal energy which makes it impossible for him 
to move except with a bound, to speak except at the 
top of his voice, or to express his disapproval except 
with the full strength of his vocabulary. He is the 
strong man Kwasind, and rends and tears not from 
fury but from sheer excess of strength and energy. 
He resembles, in his habits of speech, my friend Joe 
Ballanf ant's horse, of which remarkable animal it 
was said that running away was his natural gait. 
[Laughter.] 

''Now, I say that the President is not vindictive, 

as) 



242 Some Truths of History. 

I do not believe that he hates Democrats any more 
than he hates grizzly bears or mountain lions. He 
just loves to shoot them. He is an always loaded 
gun, and can only go off with the full force of the 
powder that is in him. In his talk about the "treas- 
onable" and ''despicable" utterances of men whose 
motives and opinions are as honest as his own, just 
as when he described Mr. Bryan as a red-handed an- 
archist in the last campaign, the President was simply 
'going off.' " — From speech of Hon. Edward W. 
Carmack, of Tennessee, in the United States Senate, 
April 25, 1902. 



11. 

BY A CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE. 

"The one fact that has become all impressive upon 
a resident of Washington is that this land of the free 
and the home of the brave has a President who is 
absorbed by a desire for notoriety. He has been pho- 
tographed while walking, running, on horseback, in 
civil and military costume, in tall, short and slouch 
hats, with his hands up, down and folded, with his 
mouth stern, relaxed, open, half open and shut — in 
short, in all attitudes and moods. 

"The advent of Roosevelt was a great thing for 
Washington photographers. His like was never seen 
in the White House, where he yells, bawls and im- 
presses the average visitor with the idea that the 



Some Truths of History. 243 

charge up San Juan hill is yet fiercely progressing. 
It is safe to say that if Mr. Roosevelt had won the 
Civil War he positively would have been unendurable. 
The truth is that our President is a gentleman of very 
limited mental capacity, fond of skyrockets and at- 
tuned to the symphony of a brass band. Consider- 
ing the condition then and now to be found in the 
metropolis history will truthfully record that when 
he was called to Washington New York lost an officer 
peculiarly fitted to act as one of its police board." — 
Press report of an interview with Hon. Allan Mc- 
Dermott, Representative in Congress from New Jer- 
sey. 



III. 

BY AN ECCLESIASTIC. 

''It is true that the gentleman who now happens 
to sit in the presidential chair at Washington has 
written of President Davis: 'Before Jefferson Davis 
took his place among arch traitors, etc., it was not 
unnatural that to dishonesty he should add treachery 
to the public. The moral difference between Bene- 
dict Arnold on the one hand, and Aaron Burr and 
Jefferson Davis on the other, is the difference between 
a politician who sells his vote for money and one who 
supports a bad measure to get a high political posi- 
tion. ' 

"When Mr. Davis was living, and a prisoner, a 



244 Some Truths of History. 

fellow named Miles placed shackles on him in prison, 
though there was no necessity for it, and no one but 
a brute would have done it. But I have never heard 
that Miles, after ]\Ir. Davis's death, brutally maligned 
his character. That species of envenomed malice was 
reserved for the recreant son of a Southern woman — 
the Rough Rider of Republican politics, the accidency 
of 1902 — the lightning change artist of the White 
House, who can hobnob with the Kaiser's brother, 
and sit cheek by jowl with an Alabama negro; who 
can indulge in meaningless platitudes while South, 
on the bravery and common heritage of Southern he- 
roes, and denounce them before the Grand Army as 
anarchists; who can profess a broad American spirit, 
which brands sectionalism as a crime, and laud the 
loyalty of our veterans of 1861-5 to the Constitution 
and reunited country, while the damning evidence of 
his own written word shows that he compared 'the 
noblest Roman of them all,' Jefferson Davis, to a 
Benedict Arnold. 

"Jefferson Davis was a statesman, a soldier, and 
a man of high character, a Senator, a Cabinet officer, 
a President, not put in office by a bullet, but by ballot. 

''Theodore Roosevelt's title to immortal fame will 
rest on shooting beasts, and profiting by the murder- 
ous act of a reprobate who shot a man." — From the 
address of the Bight Rev. Benjamin J. Keiley, Bishop 
of Savannah, on Memorial Day, April 26, 1902, at 
Savannah, Ga. 



Some Truths of History. 245 

IV. 

BY "the GEORGIA PHILOSOPHER." 

"It fills me with disgust to see young men strut- 
ting around like peacocks — acting like they made 
themselves and knew everything and expected to live 
always — when the truth is they don't know where 
they came from nor where they are going and can't 
add an hour or a day to their existence. I have but 
little hope for a vain or a conceited man, and a vain 
woman is no better. A conceited man is close kin 
to an idiot, and a woman vain of her beauty should 
sometimes remember that she had no hand in creating 
it for it was God-given or inherited. 'Oh! why 
should the spirit of mortal be proud?' Of all the 
faults of which humanity is guilty that of self-con- 
ceit is the last to be forgiven and the hardest to re- 
form. 

"I ruminated on this yesterday when I read what 
Roosevelt said in his speech at West Point. The 
editor who publishes it speaks of him as our well 
meaning but impulsive President. He should have 
said our 'conceited and erratic President.' In speak- 
ing of the great men whom West Point had graduated 
he said, 'I claim to be a historian and I speak what 
I know to be true that West Point has turned out 
more great men and more statesmen than any other 
institution in the United States.' It was self-conceit 



246 Some Truths of History. 

and ignorance that provoked such a monstrous ab- 
surdity, for Colonel Sprague, of Yale College, has 
recently challenged him to the proof and has shown 
beyond all cavil that Yale can number ten times the 
great men that West Point can number. Among 
them 1,383 ministers of the gospel, 78 justices of 
supreme courts, 17 chief justices, 546 doctors, 39 gov- 
ernors of States, and 38 United States senators — be- 
sides these Yale has sent forth an army of educators, 
established 480 colleges — 160 for women — and 8,000 
high schools; while West Point has sent out none 
but soldiers. 

''Teddy ought to be ashamed of himself, but he 
will not be. He is not yet ashamed that in his so- 
called history he called Mr. Davis an arch traitor and 
repudiator, and told what he did when governor of 
Mississippi, etc. His attention has been called to 
these malignant calumnies against a great statesman, 
and whose curriculum at West Point that he ordained 
when secretary of war is still in force, and who never 
was a member of the legislature nor governor of Mis- 
sissippi. No, he is too conceited to take back any- 
thing or to apologize for his mistakes. The man he 
slandered was dead when he published those lies, but 
his widow lives, and there are thousands of veterans 
all over the South who cherish his memory and who 
now hold his slanderer in supreme contempt. Yet he 
claims to be a historian! When a gentleman finds 
that he has unwittingly wronged another he hastens 



Some Truths of History. 247 

to apologize, but a conceited idiot rolls the morsel un- 
der his tongue and chews it as a cow chews and swal- 
lows her cud. He feeds on his conceit." — ''Bill 
Arp," in the Atlanta Constitution. 



^48 BoME Truths of History. 



ADDENDA. 



ADDENDUM A. 

[Referred to on page 42.] 

SHERMAN IN GEORGIA AND CAROLINA. 

[Extract from Alexander H. Stephens 's History of the Wa'i 
Between the States, Vol. II, pp. 510-511.] 

Private houses were sacked, pillaged and then 
burnt; and after all family supplies were destroyed, 
or rendered unfit for use, helpless women and hungry 
children were left destitute alike of shelter and food. 
I know men — old men, non-combatants, men who 
had nothing to do with the war further than to in- 
dulge in that sympathy which nature prompted — who 
were seized by a licensed soldiery and put to brutal 
torture, to compel them to disclose and deliver up 
treasure that it was supposed they possessed. They 
were in many instances hung by the neck until life 
was nearly extinguished, and then cut down with the 
promise to desist if their demands were complied 
with, and threats to repeat the operation to death if 
they were not. Judge Hiram Warner, one of the 
most upright and unoffending, as well as one of the 
most distinguished citizens of Georgia, was the victim 
of an outrage of this sort. He had had nothing to 
do with the war; but it was supposed that he had 



Some Truths of History. 249 

money, and that was what these ''truly loyal'' ''Un- 
ion Restorers," so-called, were most eager to secure. 
Instances of a similar character are numerous and 
notorious. In some cases, where parties resisted, 
their lives, as well as their purses, watches, and other 
articles of value, were taken! 



[The following extracts are from a Pamphlet on The Destruc- 
tion of Columbia, South Carolina, written and published in 
1865, by the gifted and accomplished William Gilmore Simms, 
LL. D.] 

The destruction of Atlanta, the pillaging and burn- 
ing of other towns of Georgia, and the subsequent 
devastation along the march of the Federal army 
through Georgia, gave sufficient earnest of the treat- 
ment to be anticipated by South Carolina should the 
same commander be permitted to make a like progress 
in our State. 

******** 

Half naked people cowered from the winter under 
bush-tents in the thickets, under the eaves of houses, 
under the railroad sheds, and in old cars left them 
along the route. All these repeated the same story 
of suffering, violence, poverty, and nakedness. Hab- 
itation after habitation, village after village — one 
sending up its signal flames to the other, presaging 
for it the same fate — lighted the winter and midnight 
sky with crimson horrors. 



250 Some Truths of History. 

No language can describe, nor can any catalogue 
furnish an adequate detail of the wide-spread de- 
struction of homes and property. Granaries were 
emptied, and where the grain was not carried off 
it was strewn to waste under the feet of the cavalry 
or consigned to the fire which consumed the dwelling. 
The negroes were robbed equally with the whites of 
food and clothing. The roads were covered with 
butchered cattle, hogs, mules, and the costliest furni- 
ture. Valuable cabinets, rich pianos, were not only 
hewn to pieces, but bottles of ink, turpentine, oil, 
whatever could efface or destroy was employed to 
defile and ruin. Horses were ridden into the houses. 
People were forced from their beds to permit the 
search after hidden treasures. 

W V "n* ^ tF "^ * * 

Hardly had the troops reached the head of Main 
street (in Columbia), when the work of pillage was 
begun. Stores were broken open within the first hour 
after their arrival, and gold, silver, jewels and liq- 
uors eagerly sought. The authorities, officers, sol- 
diers, all, seemed to consider it as a matter of course. 
And woe to him who carried a watch with gold chain 
pendant ; or who wore a choice hat or overcoat, or 
boots or shoes. He was stripped in the twinkling of 
an eye. Purses shared the same fate. 

No one felt safe in his own dwelling; and, in the 
faith that General Sherman would respect the Con- 



Some Truths op History. 251 

vent and have it properly guarded, numbers of young 
ladies were confided to the care of the Mother Su- 
perior, and even trunks of clothes and treasures were 
sent thither, in full confidence that they would find 
safety. Vain illusions ! The Irish Catholic troops, it 
appears, were not brought into the city at all; were 
kept on the other side of the river. But a few Cath- 
olics were among the corps which occupied the city, 
and of the conduct of these a favorable account is 
given. One of them rescued a silver goblet of the 
church, used as a drinking cup by a soldier, and 
restored it to the Rev. Dr. O'Connell. This priest, by 
the way, was severely handled by the soldiers. Such, 
also, was the fortune of the Rev. Mr. Shand, of Trin- 
ity (the Episcopal) church, who sought in vain to 
save a trunk containing the sacred vessels of his 
church. It was violently wrested from his keeping, 
and his struggle to save it only provoked the rougher 
usage. 

In a number of cases the guards provided for the 
citizens were among the most active plunderers ; were 
quick to betray their trusts, abandon their posts, and 
bring their comrades in to join in the general pillage. 
The most dexterous and adroit of these, it is the opin- 
ion of most persons, were chiefly Eastern men, or men 
of immediate Eastern origin. 

But the reign of terror did not fairly begin till 
night. In some instances, where parties complained 



252 Some Truths of History. 

of the misrule and robbery, their guards said to them, 
with a chuckle : ' ' This is nothing. Wait till to-night 
and you'll see h — 1." 

About dark a body of the soldiers fired the dwell- 
ings of Mr. Trenholm, General Wade Hampton, and 
many others. There were then some twenty fires in 
full blast in as many different quarters, * * * 
Tlie men engaged in this were well prepared with all 
the appliances essential to their work. They did not 
need the torch. They carried with them, from house 
to house, pots and vessels containing combustible 
liquids, composed probably of phosphorus and other 
similar agents, turpentine, etc., and, with balls sat- 
urated in this liquid, with which they also overspread 
floors and walls, they conveyed the flames with won- 
derful rapidity from dwelling to dwelling. Each had 
his ready box of lucifer matches, and, with a scrape 
upon the walls, the flames began to rage. Where 
houses were closely contiguous a brand from one was 
the means of conveying destruction to the other. * 
* * * The work went on without impediment and 
with hourly increase throughout the night. * * It 
was a scene for the painter of the terrible, * * * 
Throughout the whole of it the soldiers continued 
their search after spoil. The houses were soon gutted 
of their contents. Hundreds of iron safes, warranted 
"impenetrable to fire and the burglar," were not 
''Yankee proof." They were split open and robbed. 
Jewelry and plate in abundance was found. Men 
could be seen staggering off with huge waiters, vases, 



Some Truths op History. 253 

candelabra, to say nothing of cups, goblets, and small- 
er vessels, all of solid silver. Clothes and shoes, when 
new, were appropriated — the rest left to burn. 

Ladies were hustled from their chambers — their 
ornaments plucked from their persons, their bundles 
from their heads. It was in vain that the mother ap- 
pealed for the garments of her children. They were 
torn from her grasp and hurled into the flames. The 
young girl striving to save a single frock, had it rent 
to fibres in her grasp. Men and women bearing off 
their trunks were seized, despoiled, in a moment the 
trunk burst asunder, with the stroke of axe or gun 
butt, the contents laid bare, rifled of all the objects of 
desire, and the residue sacrificed to the fire. 

T^ ^ ^ w ^ rJP ^ 

' ' Your watch ! " " Your money ! ' ' was the demand. 
Frequently no demand was made. Rarely, indeed, 
was a word spoken, where the watch or chain, or ring 
or bracelet, presented itself conspicuously to the eye. 
It was incontinently plucked away from the neck, 
breast or bosom. Hundreds of women, still greater 
numbers of old men, were thus despoiled. The vener- 
able Mr. Alfred Huger was thus robbed in the cham- 
ber and presence of his family, and in the eye of an 
almost dying wife. He offered resistance, and was 
collared and dispossessed by violence. We are told that 
the venerable Ex-Senator Colonel Arthur P. Hajrue 
was treated even more roughly. 



254 Some Truths of History. 

The pistol to the bosom or head of woman, the 
patient mother, the trembling daughter, was the or- 
dinary introduction to the demand: "Your gold, 
silver, watch, jewels!" They gave no time, allowed 
no pause or hesitation. It was in vain that the woman 
offered her keys, or proceeded to open drawer or ward- 
robe, or cabinet or trunk. It was dashed to pieces by 
axe or gun butt, with the cry, ''We have a shorter 
way than that!" It was in vain that she pleaded to 
spare her furniture, and she would give up all its 
contents. All the precious things of a family; such 
as the heart loves to pore on in quiet hours when alone 
with memory — the dear miniature, the photograph, 
the portrait — these were dashed to pieces, crushed 
under foot, and the more the trembler pleaded for 
the object so precious, the more violent the rage which 
destroyed it. Nothing was sacred in their eyes save 
the gold and silver which they bore away. Nor were 
these acts those of common soldiers. Commissioned 
officers, of rank so high as that of colonel, were fre- 
quently among the most active in spoliation, and, 
after glutting themselves with spoil, would often utter 
the foulest speeches, coupled with oaths as condiment. 

******** 

There are some horrors which the historian dare 
not pursue — which the painter dare not delineate. 
They both drop the curtain over crimes which hu- 
manity bleeds to contemplate. * * * ^ lady, 
undergoing the pains of labor, had to be borne out 



Some Truths of History. 255 

on a mattress into the open air, to escape the fire. It 
was in vain that her situation was described as the 
soldiers applied the torch within and without the 
house, after they had penetrated every chamber and 
robbed them of all that was either valuable or porta- 
ble. They beheld the situation of the sufferer, and 
laughed to scorn the prayer for her safety. 

Another lady, Mrs. J , was but recently con- 
fined. Her condition was very helpless. Her life 
hung upon a hair. The men were apprised of all the 
facts in the case. They burst into the chamber — took 
the rings from the lady's fingers — plucked the watch 
from beneath her pillow, and so overwhelmed her with 
terror, the she sunk under the treatment — surviving 
their departure but a day or two. In several instances, 
parlors, articles of crockery, and even beds, were used 
by the soldiers as if they were water-closets. In one 
case, a party used vessels in this way, then put them 
on the bed, fired at and smashed them to pieces, 
emptying the filthy contents over the bedding. In 
several cases, newly made graves were opened, the 
coffins taken out, broken open, in search of buried 
treasure, and the corpses left exposed. Every spot in 
graveyard or garden, which seemed to have been re- 
cently disturbed, was sounded with sword, or bayo- 
net, or ramrod, in their desperate search after spoil. 



256 Some Truths of History. 

jefferson davis ^s regiment in mexico. 

[Extract from the New York Sun's Eeview of the Memoir of 
Jefferson Davis, bj his wife.] 

It was a fact well worth recording in this memoir 
that this regiment, from the Colonel down to the last 
private, returned home without a single article belong- 
ing to a citizen of Mexico. "The sacred silver and 
gold vessels and the church vestments studded over 
with precious stones were in an open room at Monte- 
rey and also at Saltillo. The image of the Virgin of 
Guadalupe, a large doll dressed in satin, was admired 
and examined, but left untouched, though the frock 
in which she was arrayed was worked in arabesques 
adorned with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds of great 
price, and she wore a necklace of immense pearls 
which were of several colors. Col. Davis saw one of 
the soldiers, in friendly conversation with an old 
priest, holding admiringly a gold reliquary, the top 
of which was rayed with diamonds, several hundred, 
he thought, altogether. The Mexicans felt and had 
perfect security for their property." 



NORTHERN SOLDIERY IN MEXICO. 

SECRET OF HIDDEN JEWELS REVEALED AFTER MANY 

YEARS. 
[From the New YorTc Herald, Friday, December 26, 1902.] 

Toledo, Ohio, Thursday. 
A local paper says that Warren J. Baker, secretary 
of the Northwestern Ohio Masonic Relief Association, 



Some Truths of History. 257 

made public to-day for the first time the secret history 
of the looting of Catholic cathedrals during the Mex- 
ican war. He tells how it was done and of the burial 
of the treasure. His tongue was loosened by a news- 
paper dispatch from Mexico City telling of the dis- 
covery of a chest of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, pearls 
and golden images beneath a flagstone in the chapel of 
Las Vozcainas College. 

Mr. Baker says his father marched from Vera Cruz 
to Mexico City with General Scott's army. He and a 
tentmate, after plotting for weeks, dug their way into 
some of the richest cathedrals and pillaged them of 
their fabulous wealth of valuable stones and huge gol- 
den images, carrying their burdens of precious stones 
to a hiding place beneath the flagstones in a cathedral 
yard. 

Mr. Baker's companion died soon afterward. Mr. 
Baker returned to his home in New York and then 
went to Hillsdale, Michigan. Fifteen years after plun- 
dering the cathedrals he confided his story to an inti- 
mate friend. 

This friend wrote to the Mexican government, ask- 
ing ''If there would be any chance of a 'diwy' of the 
spoils" if he should tell the government where it could 
find the sacred and valuable altar decorations which 
had been stolen. In a letter bearing an official seal the 
Hillsdale man received warning that if he knew of any 
one who had a hand in the pillaging, or if he himself 
participated in it, he would do well to forget all he 

(17) 



258 Some Truths of History. 

knew about it and "keep mum," lest his life be sacri- 
ficed in revenge for the desecration of cathedrals. 

Mr. Baker took the advice, but still intended to 
secure the treasure he had buried. 



ADDENDUM B. 

[Keferred to on page 51.] 
INTOLERANCE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 

The reprehensible and un-American principle of 
political and religious intolerance has ever found con- 
genial soil in Massachusetts. The spirit of the fathers 
there descended to the sons, and accordingly we find 
the notorious Hartford Convention (dominated by 
Massachusetts men) insisting that the Federal Consti- 
tution be amended so that no person naturalized 
thereafter could be eligible as a member of the Senate 
or House of Eepresentatives of the United States, nor 
capable of holding any civil office under the authority 
of the United States; and forty years later (1855), 
having failed to get that proscriptive principle into 
the organic law of the Federal government, the people 
of Massachusetts then declared not only that no man 
born outside of the United States should hold office 
in that State, but ' ' that no man who worshiped God in 
a Catholic church should hold office in the State. ' ' In 
this connection I think it well worth while to insert 
an extract from the speech of Hon. James B. Eustis, 
of Louisiana, in the United States Senate, January 



Some Truths of History. 259 

21, 1891. In the course of his powerful speech on that 
occasion, Mr. Eustis said: 

''I would remind the Senator from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Lodge), that, in my estimation and in my judg- 
ment, the case of the most relentless, unblushing, cruel, 
and unconstitutional political proscription is one that 
occurred in the State of Massachusetts. 

' ' Sir, it was the aim of our fathers who framed the 
Constitution of the United States that this question 
of religion should never enter into our political delib- 
erations or political action. From the bloody history 
of England they gathered the wisdom to provide that 
the people of the United States should be exempt from 
that terrible curse, religious contention and religious 
proscription ; that it would be in violation of the spirit 
of the Constitution that any State or any political 
party should establish a religious test as a qualifica- 
tion for office in this country. 

"And yet, Mr. President, do we not remember the 
period of 1854 and 1855 in the State of Massachusetts, 
when her people decided by an overwhelming major- 
ity, on a question that stirred the State from top to 
bottom, the principle and the proclaimed determina- 
tion that no man who worshiped God in a Catholic 
church should hold office in the State; that before he 
became qualified (in the estimation of the people of 
that State), before he could reinstate himself as eligi- 
ble to political office, no matter how insignificant, in 
the State of Massachusetts, he must renounce the reli- 
gion of his mother and bow down to Massachusetts* 



260 Some Truths of History. 

Protestantism, and worship that God, and that God 
alone ? 

"Was that the justice, Mr. President, which the 
Senator from Massachusetts invokes from us? Was 
that the toleration which he invokes from us? Ah, 
Mr. President, if that platform of Massachusetts and 
that political faith of Massachusetts had not been 
destroyed and exterminated in this country by the 
sturdy democracy of this land, this country from one 
end to the other would have been plunged into civil 
strife and human blood would have flowed on every 
political field of this vast domain. 

"But this is not all, Mr. President. Not satisfied 
with making war upon the religion of their fellow- 
citizens, reviving the days when they burned con- 
vents and expelled nuns from their consecrated habi- 
tations; not yet satiated with that infernal spirit of 
political proscription which makes the blackest page 
that has been written in the history of this country; 
not satisfied with having gorged themselves with polit- 
ical power secured by having trampled upon the reli- 
gion of their fellow-citizens, they extended their polit- 
ical warfare and their political proscription in still 
another direction, and declared in their platform and 
in their political creed that no man who was born 
abroad, although he might be a naturalized citizen of 
the United States, was qualified to hold office in the 
State of Massachusetts; that Mr. Pat Collins, who 
has served his State with distinction in the other 
House; who has conferred — though he would not say 



Some Truths of History. 261 

so himself — honor upon the constituency which he 
represented in the other House, and who only a few 
days ago was tendered a position by a Democratic 
governor as judge of the supreme court of Massachu- 
setts; that John Boyle O'Reilly, that great Irishman 
who made fame by his honesty, his patriotism, and his 
literary attainments, around whose tomb the other 
day were gathered, irrespective of party, thousands 
and thousands of Boston's citizens, feeling that the 
State of Massachusetts had suffered a terrible bereave- 
ment — that those two men, under the political creed 
which existed, and which probably the Senator from 
Massachusetts, if he had been old enough, would have 
indorsed, were unworthy for a double reason to hold 
any office in the State of Massachusetts — one because 
they were Catholics, and the other because they were 
foreign-born citizens. ' ' 



ADDENDUM C. 

[Keferred to on page 68.] 

THE FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF OUR GOVERNMENT. 

[Alexander H. Stephens, in ''The War Between the States," 
Vol. 1, pp. 534-535.] 

In the Federative principle of our Government its 
chief strength, its great beauty, its complete symme- 
try, its ultimate harmony, and, indeed, its very per- 
fection, mainly consist; certainly, so long as the ob- 
jects aimed at in its formation are the objects aimed 



262 Some Truths of History. 

at in its administration. And, on thig principle, on 
the full recognition of the absolute ultimate sover- 
eignty of the several States, I did consider it the best, 
and the strongest, and the grandest Government on 
earth ! My whole heart and soul were devoted to the 
Constitution, and the Union under it, with this under- 
standing of its nature, character, objects and func- 
tions ! 

When, therefore, the State of Georgia seceded, 
against my judgment — viewing the measure in the 
light of policy, only, and not of right — I felt it to be 
my duty to go with her, not only from a sense of the 
obligations of allegiance, but from other high consid- 
erations of patriotism of not much less weight and 
influence. These considerations pressed upon the mind 
the importance of maintaining this principle which 
lies at the foundation of all Federal system^s; and to 
which we were mainly indebted, in ours, for all the 
great achievements of the past. It was under this con- 
struction of the nature of our system that all these 
achievements had been attained. This was the essential 
and vital principle of the system, to which I was so 
thoroughly devoted. It was that which secured all the 
advantages of Confederation without the risk of Cen- 
tralism and Absolutism; and on its preservation de- 
pended, not only the safety and welfare, and even 
existence, of my own State, but the safety, welfare, 
and ultimate existence of all the other States of the 
Union ! The States were older than the Union ! They 
made it. It was their own creation ! Their preserva- 



Some Truths of History. 263 

tion was of infinitely more importance than its con- 
tinuance! The Union might cease to exist, and yet 
the States continue to exist, as before! Not so with 
the Union, in case of the destruction or annihilation 
of the States! With their extinction, the Union nec- 
essarily becomes extinct also. They may survive it, 
and form another, more perfect, if the lapse of time 
and changes of events show it to be necessary, for the 
same objects had in view when it was formed; but it 
can never survive them ! What may be called a Union 
may spring from the copimon ruins, but it would not 
be the Union of the Constitution! — the Union of 
States! By whatever name it might be called, 
whether Union, Nation, Kingdom, or anything 
else, according to the taste of its dupes or 
its devotees, it would, in reality, be nothing 
but that deformed and hideous Monster which 
rises from the decomposing elements of dead States, 
the world over, and which is well known by the friends 
of Constitutional Liberty, everywhere, as the Demon 
of Centralism, Absolutism, Despotism! This is the 
necessary reality of that result, whether the Imperial 
Powers be seized and wielded by the hands of many, 
of few, or of one ! 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 441 026 9 




ill! 



iitliiliUiii 



tiiUHt 



